Introduction
“The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghost” Maxine Hong Kingston is a critically acclaimed memoir published in 1975 that presents her struggles and experiences during girlhood life in America as an immigrant Chinese girl. Finding voice of silenced women is the fundamental theme of “The Woman Warrior.” Through her memoirs, Maxine Hong Kingston gives a special language for the voiceless women to find their own identities. Kingston largely figures out the lives of Chinese American women she evidently knows. She tells the talk-stories of her mom, Brave Orchid, her nameless aunt, No Name Woman, her aunt, Moon Orchid, and the warriors, Fa Mu Lan and Ts’ai Yen. It is a memoir of Kingston’s girlhood and a coming-of-age story. In her memoir, Kingston explores daughter relationship, motherhood, sisterhood, wife relationship, childbearing, child rearing, and patriarchy. “The Woman Warrior” is not a traditional tale, but Kingston’s girlhood memoirs that make her work a collage. Maxine puts forth an unanswered question how a Chinese-American can find the identity when the immigrants hide and change their names (mostly nameless) in America.
Chinese-American Women
“The Woman Warrior” is a story of a Chinese girl’s childhood life and experiences in California and shares family stories and Chinese legends. “The Woman Warrior” is a magnificently written memoir of the author, Maxine Hong Kingston, but is a pungent, truth about the slavish life of Chinese women. From her mother’s talk-stories, she understands that only a brave, wily woman can withstand in the patriarchal Chinese society. Kingston presents the two worlds, one about life in China, and another about life in America. America is the place where her parents emigr...
... middle of paper ...
...nese immigration was illegal. Kingston presents the emotional and cathartic experience in “The Woman Warrior.” She feels that she be marginalized by the voicelessness of the women in the male-dominated Chinese society. Maxine puts forth an unanswered question how a Chinese-American can find the identity when the immigrants hide and change their names (mostly nameless) in America.
Works Cited
Cheung, King-Kok. Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993. Print.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. New York: Knopf, 1976. Print.
Rishoi, Christy. From Girl to Woman: American Women’s Coming-of-age Narratives. Albany: State U of New York, 2003. Print.
Ya-Jie, Zhang. “A Chinese Woman’s Response to Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior.” Melus 13.3/4 (1986): 103. Print.
Soon after Papa’s arrest, Mama relocated the family to the Japanese immigrant ghetto on Terminal Island. For Mama this was a comfort in the company of other Japanese but for Jeanne it was a frightening experience. It was the first time she had lived around other people of Japanese heritage and this fear was also reinforced by the threat that her father would sell her to the “Chinaman” if she behaved badly. In this ghetto Jeanne and he ten year old brother were teased and harassed by the other children in their classes because they could not speak Japanese and were already in the second grade. Jeanne and Kiyo had to avoid the other children’s jeers. After living there for two mo...
Thus born The Woman Warrior, a chronicle of a Chinese American woman's personal sufferings and triumphs, of duplicities and truths, and of struggles and breakaways; a requiem for all the victims of the old culture whose soundless cries have not been heard and who died without a name, engulfed by the darkness and the silence. In her world then, at least, the failed heroine Fa Mu Lan is redeemed.
Coontz, Stephanie. A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s. New York: Basic Books, 2011. 42.
Yung, Judy. Chinese Women in America: A Pictorial History. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1989.
Chinese-Americans authors Amy Tan and Gish Jen have both grappled with the idea of mixed identity in America. For them, a generational problem develops over time, and cultural displacement occurs as family lines expand. While this is not the problem in and of itself, indeed, it is natural for current culture to gain foothold over distant culture, it serves as the backdrop for the disorientation that occurs between generations. In their novels, Tan and Jen pinpoint the cause of this unbalance in the active dismissal of Chinese mothers by their Chinese-American children.
Other research has devoted to unveiling the origins and the development of their stereotyping and put them among the historical contextual frameworks (e.g., Kawai, 2003, 2005; Prasso, 2005). Research has shown that those stereotypes are not all without merits. The China doll/geisha girl stereotype, to some degree, presents us with a romanticized woman who embodies many feminine characteristics that are/ were valued and praised. The evolving stereotype of the Asian martial arts mistress features women power, which might have the potentials to free women from the gendered binary of proper femininity and masculinity. Nevertheless, the Western media cultural industry adopts several gender and race policing strategies so as to preserve patriarchy and White supremacy, obscuring the Asian women and diminishing the positive associations those images can possibly imply. The following section critically analyzes two cases, The Memoirs of a Geisha and Nikita, that I consider to typify the stereotypical depictions of Asian women as either the submissive, feminine geisha girl or as a powerful yet threatening martial arts lady. I also seek to examine
Throughout the book, The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, the generation gap between the narrator and Brave Orchid is evident. The narrator feels that her mother's culture values have no relevance in America. In the chapter, At the Western Palace, Brave Orchid sends for her sister, Moon Orchid, to come to America and urges Moon Orchid to confront her sister's husband. The ideas that Brave Orchid has are bold and they conflict with Moon Orchid's nature. Brave Orchid and Moon Orchid are two Chinese women who live in two different countries. They are separated by a cultural gap rather than a generation gap. This gap between Brave Orchid and Moon Orchid has created two inimical viewpoints on the value of physical appearance, necessity versus extravagance, and modesty in manner.
Ling, Amy. "Maxine Hong Kingston and the Dialogic Dilemma of Asian American Writers." Ideas of Home: Literature of Asian Migration. Ed. Geoffrey Kain. East Lansing: Michigan SUP, 1997. 141-56.
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.
Bucci, Diane Todd. "Chinese Americans and the Borderland Experience on Golden Mountain: The Development of a Chinese American Identity in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts." Ethnic Studies Review 30.1/2 (2007): 1-11. Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. 12 Dec. 2011. .
Thompson, mark. “Women in Combat: Shattering the Brass Ceiling.” nationtime.com. Time, 2014. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
Since the early days of the United States, immigration has been a recurring issue. In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston serves as an example of the experiences had by Chinese immigrants in the 20th century. She faced many hardships that people who have established themselves do not, such as terrible working condition, segregation, and alienation because of Americans’ false understandings of what Chinese immigrants are really like. Some argue that immigration is what has gotten the country to where it is today, while others say that the US would be better without them. Today, a major issue that has been brought to the forefront of the collective conscience of the American people is that of Mexican immigration thanks to the recent presidential
...e women face their opposition with a warrior's strength; yet also with a maternal-like gentle compassion. Whether it is picking up the pieces of a broken family, reaching out to a community, or having pride in one's heritage and background, the women all show a sincere dedication that is truly admirable. A woman's life is never easy, and the additional struggles of being a Native American make life on the Spokane reservation even harder. But these women bless the shields of their warriors as they face the unjust world, and they look towards the future with a warrior's spirit themselves.
Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture. As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.
“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.