Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior

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In the book, Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghost by Maxine Hong Kingston, she refers to most people as ghost. She considered anyone who is not Chinese as a ghost. Kingston labels herself as a Chinese-American and she labels herself as a ghost too. This term is used throughout the entire book. In the chapter Shaman, it is used more than any other chapter. Kingston has her own meaning and interpretation of ghosts. Ghosts to her are living spirits, such as the people she calls ghost in this chapter. Ghost are people without identity in this story. This may be the most difficult story to define. It’s labeled as a non-fiction book because the stories are about events happening in Kingston’s life, but the memoirs are something different. …show more content…

I made my will and eggshell encasing the monster’s fur so that the hollow hairs could not draw. I never let up willing its size smaller, its hair to retract, until by dawn the Sitting Ghost temporarily disappeared…. The sitting ghost has many wide black mouths. It is dangerous. It is real. Most ghost make sure brief and gauzy appearances that eyewitnesses doubt their own sightings. This one conjure up enough substance to sit solidly throughout a night. It is a serious ghost, not at all playful… It does not bother with tricks. It wants lives” …show more content…

Her mental strength is put to the test. The sitting ghost is a figment of Brave Orchids’ imagination, but it seems real to her in her head. Brave Orchid considers most people in America to be a ghost because they don’t have an identity. She calls it a hairy butt boulder, a fox spirit, the black thing, a dark creature. What do all of these things mean? A monster is what she’s describing. The ghost has no facial features or a shape. Brave Orchid can’t shake this ghost so she befriends it in a way. She mocks it and regains strength from the ghost. She threatens to turn the ghost into food. It’s obvious that she can’t fight this, but turning the ghost into food and eating it will make it go

Rhetorical Techniques In Maxe Hong Kingston's No Name Woman
1624 Words | 4 Pages
The definition of the “ghost” is a shadow which wandering among or haunting other people. The villagers called her aunt a ghost because they are scared of her behavior. The life that they know had been attacked. Kingston uses the harsh responses of the villagers indirectly exposes her aunt ‘s challenge to the society.
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Proof by David Auburn
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Ghost- a vision of a dead person that is believed to appear or become visible to the living as a vague image. There have been many cases in reality where one sees the ghost of their deceased loved ones or encounter some sort of paranormal activity in their life. “Proof” by David Auburn plays around with the “Ghost story” in his play to represent identity, memory of Catherine.
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Women In The Woman Warrior By Maxine Hong Kingston
728 Words | 2 Pages
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston portrays the complicated relationship between her and her mother, while growing up as a Chinese female in an American environment. She was surrounded by expectations and ideals about the inferior role that her culture imposed on women. In an ongoing battle with herself and her heritage, Kingston struggles to escape limitations on women that Chinese culture set. However, she eventually learns to accept both cultures as part of who she is. I was able to related to her as a Chinese female born and raised in America. I have faced the stereotypes and expectations that she had encountered my whole life and I too, have learned to accept both my Chinese and American culture.
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Impact of Chinese Heritage on Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior
2366 Words | 5 Pages
"Haunted by the power of images? I do feel that I go into madness and chaos. There's a journey of everything falling apart, even the meaning and the order that I can put on something by the writing." —Maxine Hong Kingston
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Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior - No Name Woman
735 Words | 2 Pages
The excerpt, "No Name Woman", from Maxine Hong Kingston's book, Woman Warrior, gives insight into her life as a Chinese girl raised in America through a tragic story of her aunt's life, a young woman raised in a village in China in the early 1900s. The story shows the consequences beliefs, taught by parents, have on a child's life. Kingston attempts to figure out what role the teachings of her parents should have on her life, a similar attempt for many of us in the world. Lessons taught by our parents, the people who brought us into this world, help guide us into the people we become as adults. Hopefully, the guidance is positive.
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Compare What Extent Are Born Good In Frankenstein
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The Monster scares the villagers, “some fled, some attacked” automatically hating the strange being that had come into their midst (75). However, the Monster does nothing against the villagers, even though he is seen with giant stature and brute strength. After the village incident, the Monster flees and finds a small family living in the wilderness in a small cottage. As he stays near the cottagers for a time, he begins to learn that he is indeed alone. He learns the roles of family members and yet he does nothing to provoke them.
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Woman Warrior
698 Words | 2 Pages
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.
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Woman Warrior
442 Words | 1 Pages
In the book The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Kingston, a story of a girl trapped between the culture of her family’s past and the culture currently surrounding her is presented. The girl, Maxine, enters into conflict with her mother and what can be explained as an old and traditional China. Maxine’s own beliefs are found in the newer American way of life with her attempts to assimilate to the culture, making it difficult for her to feel any relation between the two very different environments. It is through these tribulations that Maxine is a “woman warrior” coming to age as a Chinese-American.
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Maxine Hong Kingston and the Search for Identity
1922 Words | 4 Pages
Maxine Hong Kingston is in search of herself. She tries to find herself as a woman in a man's world, as a Chinese in America, and, as a daughter instead of a son. In all her writings one can see her search for her identity. One can feel her rebellion to convention, her need to break the barriers of society, her desire to make a perfect world where everyone is treated as an equal. But most of all her writings depict her as a strong and proud woman who is willing to battle against convention and society to preserve her convictions
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The Woman Warrior
1116 Words | 3 Pages
Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior discusses her and her mother Brave Orchid's relationship. On the surface, the two of them seem very different however when one looks below the surface they are very similar. An example of how they superficially seem different is the incident at the drug store when Kingston is mortified at what her mother makes her do. Yet, the ways that they act towards others and themselves exemplifies their similarities at a deeper level. Kingston gains many things from her mother and becomes who she is because of Brave Orchid, "Rather than denying or suppressing the deeply embedded ambivalence her mother arouses in her, Kingston unrelentingly evokes the powerful presence of her mother, arduously and often painfully exploring her difficulties in identifying with and yet separating from her" (Quinby, 136). Throughout Maxine Hong Kingston's autobiography Kingston disapproves of numerous of her mother's qualities however begins to behave in the same manner.
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Ghosts in The Women Warrior
1896 Words | 4 Pages
The word “ghost” originates from the Aged English word “gast,” and its synonyms are “soul, spirit [good or bad spirit], existence, breath,” and “demon” (etymonline.com). In the book, The Woman Warrior, that is, ironically, subtitled as Memoirs of a Girlhood Amid Ghosts, the author, Maxine Hong Kingston, uses the word “ghost” as a metaphor to typify her confusion concerning discovering a difference amid reality and unreality – the difference that divides her American present that prefers and her Chinese past that her mother, Valiant Orchid, filters into her mind across talk-stories that steadily daunt her to cross her established bounds. Ghosts, in the book, change reliant on point of view. Anybody whose deeds deviates from what is satisfactory in one area is a ghost according to the associates of that society. To Chinese people, like Valiant Orchid, Americans are ghosts. On the supplementary hand, Chinese are ghosts according to Chinese-Americans (including Kingston, who finds her past loaded alongside frightening Chinese ghosts). For Kingston, Ghosts, however, are not always scary; in fact, a little of them enthuse...
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The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
1199 Words | 3 Pages
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.
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Analysis Of The Woman Warrior By Maxine Hong Kingston
1349 Words | 3 Pages
The woman warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston is a collection of stories that blends between childhood memories, traditional Chinese stories and fictional stories. Maxine Kingston was born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents. Growing up as a Chinese American woman, Kingston was exposed to gender roles defined by the traditional Chinese culture and the American culture. Thus, throughout woman warrior, Kingston portrays the conflict between the traditional Chinese gender roles and American gender roles and her viewpoint towards the issue. Particularly, the story white Tigers, in which Kingston portrays herself as a traditional Chinese warrior who goes to battle in absence of her father showcases an alternative to traditional Chinese
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Analysis Of No-Name Woman
1348 Words | 3 Pages
Dead ghost! Ghost! You 've never been born." This was said by the villagers because she and her son, "little ghost" was an outcast. According to traditional Chinese belief a ghost is the spirit form of a person who has died due to misfortune, then comes back for revenge. This theme of judgment got worse because through the concept of orientalism because the aunt was at first considered an outcast and then it got worse and everyone wanted her to become a ghost, to be dead as if she never existed. This was done by the way the citizens viewed the aunt for her "sin". They emphasized her being dead when they raided the home "the people with long hair hung it over their faces." Which is what the Chinese people viewed the ghost as Kingston explains that her aunt drowned her child with her because she knew that her child would grow up to be a pariah and wanted to spare it the shame that had killed her, made her a ghost, even before she died. She could have abandoned her child but in the village culture "mothers who love their children take them along." The protagonist also suggests that the baby was a girl because males were the preferred sex and if it was a male her aunt would have abandoned the baby for the village to take care of
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The Open Window by Saki
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In a ghost story, as the genre itself suggests, readers would expect the presence of a ghost especially since the author includes tropes of a conventional ghost story. In “The Open Window”, Saki uses the isolation element when he mentions that one of the main characters Framton migrated to a rural retreat (595), which can be assumed to be a secluded area. This is a common cliché that one would suppose in a ghost story. Also, the “ghost” incident that scared Framton occurred at twilight, which is a trope as well because ghosts normally appear when it gets dark. This increases the believability of the story as a ghost story.
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Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior

Rhetorical Techniques In Maxe Hong Kingston's No Name Woman

Proof by David Auburn

Women In The Woman Warrior By Maxine Hong Kingston

Impact of Chinese Heritage on Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior