Summary Of The Woman Warrior By Maxine Hong Kingston

It was through this story that the narrator learned how careful a young woman must be when growing up in the Chinese culture. Years after hearing of her aunt’s misfortune, the narrator realizes that she has carried on this ostracism and is equally as guilty as the others who participated in this punishment of silence. However, the narrator feels an intense connection with the outcast of her family. “My aunt haunts me—her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her…” (16). Perhaps the narrator feels this bond because she herself feels completely alienated from the family and could never be fully connected to her Chinese heritage.

Tan’s mother, Daisy, however, speaks "in a combination of English and Mandarin" (Cliff notes 6). Tan was taunted in high school for her mother’s heavy Shanghai accent (Cliff notes 6). Because Daisy never became fluent in English, the language problem only escalated between the two women. (Cliff notes 6) Tan expresses this stress in her novel with the character Jing-mei. Jing-mei admits that she has trouble understanding her mother’s meaning.

The Woman Warrior In her autobiography, The Woman Warrior, Maxine talks-story about how she grew up surrounded by the Chinese culture but went to American schools. How her mother told her stories of herself as a shaman and of Fa Mu Lan when Maxine brought home good grades. How she was put down by the Chinese sexism and rebelled from it. This is the story of Maxine’s search for a compromise between the American culture and the Chinese culture and how she eventually found a balance between the two cultures. When Maxine was growing up in Chinatown her mother, Brave Orchid, would tell her stories, stories about Chinese heroes, stories about being a shaman in China, stories of her nameless aunt.

Lindo tries to instill Chinese qualities in her daughter while Waverly refuses to recognize her heritage and concentrates on American culture. The second bond is that of Jing-Mei Woo and her mother, Suyuan. In the beginning of the book Jing-Mei speaks of confusion in her recently deceased mother's actions. The language and cultural barrier presented between Jing-Mei and Suyuan is strong enough to cause constant separation and misunderstanding. The first and most important conflict in the novel is heritage.

Kingston’s aunt was murdered for being involved in this situation. The shame of what Kingston’s aunt brought to the family led them to forget about her. This particular talk-story is a cautionary tale to deter Kingston from having premarital sex and to instill in her fear of death and humiliation if she violates the lesson her mother explained to her. Kingston is able to get pregnant but with the lecture her mother advises her with keeps her obedient. Brave Orchid tells her this story to open her eyes to the ways of Chinese culture.

They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. (Tan 40-41) Amy Tan frames The Joy Luck Club with Jing-mei Woo's search for identity. When Jing-mei's mother's friends tell Jing-mei that her sisters have at long last been found and insist that she tell her sisters about their mother's life, Jing-mei emotionally replies that she does not know her mother. However, her mother's friends' generosity helps Jing-mei to realize how much she wishes that she had understood her mother, how desperately she would like to question her if only she could. It is in this moment that Jing-mei recognizes the necessity of understanding her mother's life in order both to figure out who her mother was and to understand herself.

As a third wife she maintains very little status in the home of Wu Tsing. Ann-Mei's family disowns her mother because by becoming a third wife she has brought shame to her family. "When I was a young girl in China, my grandmother told me my mother was a ghost". Ann-Mei is told to forget about her mother and move on in her life. The fact that Ann-Mei is told to forget her mother because she has become something she could not control, is preposterous.

(pg. 291). Lindo is hurt because her daughter Waverly, is talking to her like she is a child. Waverly does not do this on purpose, she just has a hard time understanding her mother and her background, like the other daughters in the book. "Living with their traditional culture in American society, Chinese-American women suffer the prob... ... middle of paper ... ...ying to save their daughters from the cultural barriers, and identity crisis’ that they had to face.

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 author starts the book with the story of her aunt. This story was a well-kept family secret being that her aunt’s actions were of great disappointment to the family.

I think she says this because she didn’t understand her aunt’s ways. I don’t think that she was actually haunted; I think that she was just really confused. In Kingston’s book, the myths, talk-stories, and memoirs she puts together help her to understand her own life on her own terms. Whether she is trying to understand the Chinese culture that her mother teaches her or to understand the American culture she is growing up in, the stories are her way of accepting the life that she is born with. Kingston uses the negative influence on her life from her mother to help her understand what her mother expects and an insight into the Chinese traditions.