The Woman Warrior: A Song For A Barbarian Reed Pipe

1099 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Influence of multiculturalism in US

Woman Warrior The beauty of the United States of America is its melting pot of culture and religion. It is a hybrid of being an American citizen but also being identified as an ethnic group. It is a capital of immigrants and along with it; the bringing of many new cultural trades. Kingston, is a Chinese-American but born to immigrant parents. Many immigrant parents try to up bring their children into their cultural backgrounds in a new country where those backgrounds aren’t the norms. This conflict leaves the child being in limbo between their ethnic backgrounds and their American present. Genders also play an immense role for immigrant ethnic cultures. In The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, the author goes on to explain the struggles between cultural differences and …show more content…

Kingston has the belief that in order for herself to be quiet and not talk, her mother had a part of her frenum cut. Kingston goes on saying what her mother would say to her, “a ready tongue is an evil.” (pg. 164). In actuality Kingston finds out that her mother had cut her frenum in order for her to speak any language freely. “I cut it so you would not be tongue-tied. Your tongue would be able to move in any language. You’ll be able to speak languages that are completely different form one another. “But isn’t a ready tongue an evil?” “Things are different in this ghost country.” (pg.164). Kingston’s mother hints of giving her daughter the most opportunity available in United States, as she realizes that the Americas are a big melting pot of numerous cultures, and a diversified lifestyle; where she isn’t anchored down by a Countries’ traditions and totalitarian grasp. By cutting her frenum, Kingston’s language capabilities can be countless; shapeless like water being able to take on any form. By learning one’s language one can start to understand it’s

Show More
Related

  • Race in A Different Mirror’ by Ronald Takaki

    1413 Words  | 3 Pages

    The English immigrants are given a brief introduction as the first ethnic group to settle in America. The group has defined the culture and society throughout centuries of American history. The African Americans are viewed as a minority group that were introduced into the country as slaves. The author depicts the struggle endured by African Americans with special emphasis on the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. The entry of Asian Americans evoked suspicion from other ethnic groups that started with the settlement of the Chinese. The Asian community faced several challenges such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the mistreatment of Americans of Japanese origin during World War II. The Chicanos were the largest group of Hispanic peoples to settle in the United States. They were perceived as a minority group. Initially they were inhabitants of Mexico, but after the Westward expansion found themselves being foreigners in their native land (...

    Read More

  • The Chinatown Trunk Mystery Analysis

    1282 Words  | 3 Pages

    This nation was relatively stable in the eyes of immigrants though under constant political and economic change. Immigration soon became an outlet by which this nation could thrive yet there was difficulty in the task on conformity. Ethnic groups including Mexicans and Chinese were judged by notions of race, cultural adaptations and neighborhood. Mary Lui’s “The Chinatown Trunk Mystery” and Michael Innis-Jimenez’s “Steel Barrio”, provides a basis by which one may trace the importance of a neighborhood in the immigrant experience explaining the way in which neighborhoods were created, how these lines were crossed and notions of race factored into separating these

    Read More

  • Race And Race In Southland, By Nina Revoyr

    853 Words  | 2 Pages

    The history of racial and class stratification in Los Angeles has created tension amongst and within groups of people. Southland, by Nina Revoyr, reveals how stratification influences a young Asian woman to abandon her past in order to try and fully integrate herself into society. The group divisions are presented as being personal divisions through the portrayal of a generational gap between the protagonist, Jackie, and her grandfather. Jackie speaks of her relationship with Rebecca explaining her reasons why she could never go for her. Jackie claims that “she looked Asian enough to turn Jackie off” (Revoyr, 2003, p. 105). Unlike her grandfather who had a good sense of where he came from and embraced it, Jackie rejected her racial background completely. Jackie has been detached from her past and ethnicity. This is why she could never be with Rebecca, Jackie thought of her as a “mirror she didn’t want to look into”. Rebecca was everything Jackie was tr...

    Read More

  • Paying the Price: The Adventures of Eddie Fung

    1631 Words  | 4 Pages

    Zia, Helen. "Surrogate Slaves to American Dreamers." Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000. N. pag. Print.

    Read More

  • Self-Segregation In 'Mericans' By Sandra Cisneros

    1927 Words  | 4 Pages

    Everyone had to prove they were independent, capable, and willing to integrate into the cultural melting pot with its own identity of hard work, grit, and determination which established and fostered success in American society. But, not everyone who chooses to take the adventure and risk associated with becoming American wishes to share in this identity. Many feel it necessary to shun the American identity and observe it with a level of disdain. Disregarding the reasons themselves or previous generations may have immigrated to America for. In the short story “Mericans”, Sandra Cisneros illustrates this concept through a character in the story. “The awful grandmother knits the names of the dead and the living into one long prayer fringed with the grandchildren born in that barbaric country with its barbaric ways. (Cisneros)”. In the story it is later identified the children in reference were indeed born in the United States. “Awful grandmother” has an incredibly low opinion of the society in which her grandchildren were born. Barbaric, let’s take a look at that word shall we—“without civilizing influences; uncivilized; primitive (barbaric)”. The detriment of that perception seems to be counterproductive to the melting pot concept of the United

    Read More

  • Gish Jen’s novel Typical American

    1268 Words  | 3 Pages

    A mother drives her three kids to soccer practice in a Ford minivan while her husband stays at the office, rushing to finish a report. Meanwhile, a young woman prays her son makes his way home from the local grocery without getting held up at knife point by the local gang. Nearby, an immigrant finishes another 14-hour shift at the auto parts factory, trying to provide for his wife and child, struggling to make way in a new land. Later, a city girl hails a cab to meet her girlfriends at their favorite club to celebrate her new promotion over cosmopolitans. These people – the suburban soccer mom, the tired immigrant, the worried mother from the hood, and the successful city girl – each represent the different realities or fantasies that exist in the American society. They are all living or working towards what they believe to be the coveted American dream. Some of these people are similar to the Chinese immigrant, Ralph, in Gish Jen’s novel Typical American. However, all are confused as to what the American dream really is and whether or not the dream is real.

    Read More

  • Second-Generation Immigration: Finding a Balance between Two Cultures

    671 Words  | 2 Pages

    The immigrant’s journey to America, as depicted throughout history, transports culture, language, beliefs and unique lifestyles from one land to the other, but also requires one to undergo an adaptation process. The children of these immigrants, who are usually American-born, experience the complexity of a bicultural life, even without completely connecting to the two worlds to which they belong. Potentially resulting is the internal desire to claim a singular rather than dual identity, for simplicity, pride and a sense of acceptance. Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian-American author and writer of “My Two Lives” could never classify herself as.

    Read More

  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

    1132 Words  | 3 Pages

    Establishing an identity has been called one of the most important milestones of adolescent development (Ruffin, 2009). Additionally, a central part of identity development includes ethnic identity (ACT for Youth, 2002). While some teens search for cultural identity within a smaller community, others are trying to find their place in the majority culture. (Bucher and Hinton, 2010)The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian chronicles Junior’s journey to discovery of self. As with many developing teens, he finds himself spanning multiple identities and trying to figure out where he belongs. “Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other” (p.118). On the reservation, he was shunned for leaving to go to a white school. At Reardon, the only other Indian was the school mascot, leaving Junior to question his decision to attend school he felt he didn’t deserve. Teens grappling with bicultural identities can relate to Junior’s questions of belonging. Not only is Junior dealing with the struggle between white vs. Indian identities, but with smaller peer group identities as well. In Wellpinit, Junior is th...

    Read More

  • Replace the Old Stereotypes and Myths in Our Society

    882 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cofer, Judith Ortiz. "The Myth of the Latina Woman." Bullock, Richard, Maureen Daly Goggin and Francine Weinburg. The Norton Field Guide to Writing. Ed. Marilyn Moller. 3rd. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013. 806-812. Print.

    Read More

  • Two Kinds by Amy Tan

    966 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.

    Read More

  • An Interesting Connection

    717 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the story Reclaiming Culture and the Land: Motherhood and the Policies of Sustaining Community, the author describes just some of the challenges of working while being a Native American living on and off within a normal Caucasian society. One of the issues brought up in the story is that the author does a poor job in raising her children while they are at the most important stages in their childhood. In this Indian community, everyone knows each other and it is a close, tight knit community throughout. One of the principals which backs this up is that one or more mothers in the community take care of all of the children of the community, kind of like a daycare center. The author is indeed one of these caretaker mothers that would spend a lot of time with all the children. As a result, outsiders look at her and believe that she is doing a poor job at what she considers to be a fine parenting job. And other hardship that she has is trying to understand her place in society because she is a woman. In the story, she describes how things are constantly being taken from her and assumed by the male sex. These and more are some of the problems that she has to deal with in the story.

    Read More

  • Essay On Korean Immigration

    880 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... The interview with John reminded of how culture is defined as the norms, opinions, beliefs, values, and world views shared by a group of individuals and transmitted across generations. After the interview my perception about John change because I have always known him as passive, spoiled kid, and lazy. However, he proved me wrong by his honest response and the fact that he has a job and pays his own bills. He was very sick during the course of the interview and would not turn down or say no to my request; he deserves respect and honor for that. The one thing we culturally shared together is that we are both American immigrants thriving for the same dream from the greatest country on earth which most Americans take for granted. The background of John varies greatly and shares witness to the multiplicity of experiences that characterize the immigrants’ journey.

    Read More

  • Silence

    617 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first time Kingston had to speak English in kindergarten was the moment silence infiltrated her world. Simple dialogue such as “hello” or asking for directions was hell for her because people usually couldn’t hear her the first time she asked, and her voice became weaker every time she tried to repeat the question (422). No matter what, speaking English just shattered her self-esteem.

    Read More

  • Search for Identity in It’s Hard Enough Being Me

    1716 Words  | 4 Pages

    Raya’s essay is an informative account of life for a multicultural American, because it is told from an actual multicultural author’s viewpoint. It gives the reader a sense that the information is accurate. It would be harder to accept the viewpoint if the author were for example, a white male writing about how a Mexican, Puerto Rican woman feels. As Connie Young Yu points out, information retold by someone who didn’t live the experiences is most often falsely perceived. Yu uses the example of white American historians writing about the lives of Chinese immigrants. Yu says that there is no accurate account for the lives of the immigrants, because they didn’t document their lives themselves. The little information that there is in history books only tells about their obvious accomplishments. There is no official understanding of their personal lives or feelings (Yu 30).

    Read More

  • A Mother-Daughter Relationship in The Woman Warrior

    1481 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life.

    Read More

More about The Woman Warrior: A Song For A Barbarian Reed Pipe

Open Document