Summary Of The Woman Warrior By Maxine Hong Kingston

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Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American woman whose first book won a
National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976. Her follow-up China Men won the National Book Award (biography.com, 2016, para. 1). Most of Kingston’s books relate to her life. For instance, is her book ‘The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts’, The Chapter “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe” was about her experience in school and the other chapter was “No Name Woman” which was about her aunt. In Chinese culture everything a person does should satisfy people. People were extremely critical that it can affects one’s life. Kingston relates her stories to her life to show how cruel the Chinese culture is. Based on Kingston’s culture, she wrote many books about it. …show more content…

Kingston writes about herself as Fa Mu Lan because she dreams of becoming a warrior. Kingston contrasted this story with her own life in America, where she can barely stand up her racist bosses. Then she realizes she was strong enough to face them. This is another example of how her race affected her and how people treat her as a person. In the third chapter, “Shaman” predominantly focuses on Kingston’s mother, Brave Orchid and her old like back in China. As a child, Kingston was terrified of her mother’s talk story where she was told that Chinese babies are left to die, slave girls being bought and sold, etc. The story ends by her visiting her mom after not seeing her for a …show more content…

As a result, she goes crazy and dies in California state mental asylum. Hearing these stories from her mother can make her perceive Chinese people differently. In the final chapter, “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe”, it is about Kingston. It focuses on her anger to express herself trying to please her mother. In the story it talks about how Kingston used to bully a silent Chinese girl. Kingston told her mother how she feels and her mother told her to be quiet. Kingston gets frustrated from her mom and she tells her mother confessions. She end up thanking her mom for the talk-stories. This chapter shows readers how Chinese people are expected to be respectful and “quiet”, and because there was a girl in Kingston’s class who was quiet, she wanted to be the only quiet person so she bullied her. This indicates how Kingston’s culture affects her

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