The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston Essay

The piece describes what she envisioned her time in China would be like; visions of small talk and drinking tea danced in her head (Schmitt 125). This is a bit admirable to a more reserved person because it shows how outgoing she is when diving into a new culture. However, the reality of a language barrier and day to day behavior settled in. A series of uncomfortable exchanges illustrate the challenge of being accepted into a new culture. Described in the essay are people standing around in bath robes and under garments and popping in and out of rooms like some sort of clown

     The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston presents the story of a girl trapped between the cultures of her surrounding environment and that which her mother and family have forced upon her. Knowing only the Chinese way of life, this girl’s mother attempts to familiarize her daughter, whom is also the narrator, with the history of their family. The mother shares this heritage through the use of stories in hopes the narrator will be prepared for her ultimate return to China, which is a life completely foreign to her own. Through these stories and the strong influence of the surrounding American culture, the narrator’s life and imagination spin off in a new direction. She is confronted by

The author argues the “combat masculine-warrior paradigm is the essence of military culture. This paradigm persists today even with the presence of “others” (e.g. women and gays) who do not fit the stereotypical image of combatant or masculine warrior.” In a 5-paragraph essay, discuss how the presence of women or gays will cause the military culture to change.

Frank Chin has been the most vocal critic of Kingston's who accused her "of reinforcing white fantasies about Chinese Americans" (Chin, 1991) and claimed that writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang who won approval of the American white readers deliberately distorted the image of Chinese American to reinforce stereotypes and cater to the fantasies of American readers about a traditionalist Chinese culture. (Frank Chin, 1991, pp. 3-29)

In the novel The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston uses ghosts to represent a battle between American and Chinese cultures. The two cultures have different views of what a ghost is. The Chinese believe the ghost spirits may be of people dead or alive. Chinese culture recognizes foreigners and unfamiliar people as ghosts because, like American ghosts, they are mysterious creatures of the unknown. Americans view ghosts as spirits of the dead that either help or haunt people. American ghosts may or may not be real. There spirits are there but physical appearance is a mystery.

Throughout the novel The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, the past is incorporated into the present through talk-stories combined into each chapter. Kingston uses talk-stories, to examine the intermingling of Chinese myths and lived experiences. These stories influence the life of the narrator as the past is constantly spoken about from the time she is young until the novel ends and she becomes an adult. Kingston incorporates two cultures. She is not a direct recipient of Chinese culture, but she has her own sense of talk-story, that she learns from her mother, which tells the old Chinese stories with a sense of myth, in a new American way. This is a way of weaving two cultures together, bringing the Chinese past into her present American life.

The theme of “voiceless woman” throughout the book “the woman warrior” is of great importance. Maxine Kingston narrates several stories in which gives clear examples on how woman in her family are diminished and silenced by Chinese culture. The author not only provides a voice for herself but also for other women in her family and in her community that did not had the opportunity to speak out and tell their stories.

The primary meaning of the word "ghost" in the work is, of course, "American" or "white person". "White person" might seem more attractive because of the idea of paleness that we associate with ghosts, but there are "Mexican ghosts" and "Negro ghosts" - so "American" is more accurate. This is supported by the idea that those Chinese born in America are considered ghosts: "They would not tell us children because we had been born among ghosts, were taught by ghosts, and were ourselves ghost-like. They called us a kind of ghost. Ghosts are noisy and full of air; they talk during meals. They talk about everything" (183-84). Even one generation makes this difference. The mysterious Chinese name given to the "assimilated" Chinese by the new immigrants is "Ho Chi Kuei" (204), which Kingston is unable to translate in full (further demonstrating her assimilation) - but "Kuei" she knows means "Ghosts". This idea of Americans as ghosts goes even further in some of Kingston's titles for Americans,

Maxine Hong Kingston's autobiography, The Woman Warrior, features a young Chinese-American constantly searching for "an unusual bird" that would serve as her impeccable guide on her quest for individuality (49). Instead of the flawless guide she seeks, Kingston develops under the influence of other teachers who either seem more fallible or less realistic. Dependent upon their guidance, she grows under the influence of American and Chinese schools and the role models of Brave Orchid, Fa Mu Lan, and Moon Orchid. Her education by these counselors consequently causes her to abandon her search for an escort, the bird to be found somewhere in the measureless sky,

In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston crafts a fictitious memoir of her girlhood among ghosts. The book’s classification as a memoir incited significant debate, and the authenticity of her representation of Chinese American culture was contested by Asian American scholars and authors. The Woman Warrior is ingenuitive in its manipulation of the autobiographical genre. Kingston integrates the value of storytelling in her memoir and relates it to dominant themes about silence, cultural authenticity, and the cultivation of identity. Throughout her work, Kingston reaches a variety of conclusions about the stories her mother told her by writing interpretations of her mother, Brave Orchid’s, “talk-story”. Brave Orchid’s talk-story is a form

In theory, ghosts are the remnants of what was once a human being. Someone, who at one time, had substance on this earth. They are everything that we, as living creatures, are- but without the vehicle we call the human body. They exhibit all the mental attributes that you and I have such as thought, conscience, emotions and emotional needs, morals, calculation, ego, personality and everything that makes up the human psyche.

In the mid 19th century, America was viewed as a hotspot for freedom and wealth. When the noise of the gold rush flooded the world, immigrants started to see America more appetizing than ever. The Chinese saw America as a place to have a fresh start and as a place of refuge because of it’s generosity, so they immigrated to the west in great numbers. There was a large Chinese population in Virginia and all along the Pacific coast. Writers Mark Twain and Maxine Hong Kingston both wrote in great detail about the Chinese Immigrants. They went into detail about the immigrants and how they came over and why. Although Twain and Kingston both wrote about the immigrants in a positive light, Twain was sympathetic of the immigrants and Kingston focused more on their image and her ancestors.

     Women have played a tremendous role in many countries' armed forces from the past to the present. Women have thoroughly integrated into the armed forces; all positions in the armed forces should be fully accessible to women who can compete with men intellectually and physically.

Maxine Hong Kingston’s novel The Woman Warrior is a series of narrations, vividly recalling stories she has heard throughout her life. These stories clearly depict the oppression of woman in Chinese society. Even though women in Chinese Society traditionally might be considered subservient to men, Kingston viewed them in a different light. She sees women as being equivalent to men, both strong and courageous.

When it comes to combat assignments and the needs of the military, men take precedence over all other considerations, including career prospects of female service members. Female military members have been encouraged to pursue opportunities and career enhancement within the armed forces, which limit them only to the needs and good of the service due to women being not as “similarly situated” as their male counterparts when it comes to strength or aggressiveness, and are not able to handle combat situations.