Woodchucks by Maxine Kumin Maxine Kumin?s, Woodchucks provides an interesting and creative perspective into the mind state of those influenced by nazi warfare. What begins as a seemingly humorous cat and mouse hunt, reminiscent of such movie classics as Caddyshack, soon develops into an insatiable lust for blood. Kumin?s descriptive language provides the reader with the insight necessary to understand to the speaker?s psychology as they are driven beyond the boundaries of pacifism. The
The Powerful Words of Amy Tan, Maxine Hairston, and Mike Rose The power of words is immeasurable. Words help people to voice their opinions and express their thoughts and feelings. Our everyday lives are shaped by communication and in general language. A persons language can often influence success and happiness. America is viewed as a melting pot for numerous different people and their respective languages. Language is so vital in our society that a person of diverse ethnic background can face
Maxine Hong Kingston's No Name Woman "A highly fictive text [whose non-fiction label gives] the appearance of being an actual representation of Asian American experience in the broader public sphere." (Gloria Chun, "The High Note") Such a disparaging remark about the misleading nature of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior has been readily refuted, notably by Leilani Nishime, who proposes in her essay "Engendering Genre..." that it is a text that transcends genre confines; it challenges
Maxine Hong Kingston and the Search for identity 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
Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior - No Name Woman 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
Learn from the Stories Having two considerably different cultures can cause a strife with one’s identity. In “No Name Woman,” Maxine Kingston’s mother tells her a story of her aunt that committed adultery which therefore led to her segregation from her own family and villagers. Kingston’s mother asserts that the story should not be told by anyone and the story’s purpose was to strike fear in her daughter. Then, Kingston explores the different scenarios that could have led to her aunt’s suppressed
The Woman Warrior is a compelling novel written by Maxine Hong Kingston. The novel won National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction after receiving a great deal of praise from critics. In her novel, Kingston utilizes various literary elements to reveal the theme. Through the use of conflict, symbolism, and characterization, the message behind the theme becomes prominent to readers. The use of conflict gives readers a vivid screening of the role women played in the Chinese society. The symbols
Quest for Identity in Maxine Hong Kingston's Autobiography, The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston's autobiography, The Woman Warrior, features a young Chinese-American constantly searching for "an unusual bird" that would serve as her impeccable guide on her quest for individuality (49). Instead of the flawless guide she seeks, Kingston develops under the influence of other teachers who either seem more fallible or less realistic. Dependent upon their guidance, she grows under the influence
Introduction Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, published in 1976, is an assemblage of undisclosed memoirs that put together “talk-stories” and false realities to demonstrate the hardship that a second-generation Chinese-American faces in trying to battle the muting barriers of a home known only through stories and a new nation, America, that is not yet accommodating for Chinese immigrants. The significance of the title is that it is through the lens of
Impact of Chinese Heritage on Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior "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 It is true that some dream in color, and some dream in black and white. Some dream in Sonic sounds, and some dream in silence. In Maxine Hong Kingston's literary works, the readers enter a soundless
In the novel, Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, the young character tries to immerse herself into a different culture from her Chinese roots into an American. As a first generation immigrant living in the U.S she undergoes a need to adjust her life to match her peers. Kingston navigates the story surrounding a little girl trying to find her identity and the struggle to survive in a different culture. Kingston goes through the process of finding her own identity while indulging into two other
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
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
Maxine Hong Kingston Understanding Her Life through The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior” is novel composed of myths and memoirs that have shaped her life. Her mother’s talk-stories about her no name aunt, her own interpretation of Fa Mu Lan, the stories of ghosts in doom rooms and American culture have been the basis of her learning. She learned morals, truths, and principals that would be the basis of her individuality. Since her mother's talk-story was one of the
Maxine vs. Celie Dealing with the Past This paper compares and contrasts Celie’s story in The Color Purple by Alice Walker to that of Maxine’s story in the Woman Warrior by Maxine Kingston and how each of these women deals with their past. Both of these novels deal heavily with female oppression. While both of the women in the novels must deal with their pasts, their pasts and the manner in which they deal with them are very different. The Color Purple is a novel that is a series of letters written
Maxine Hong Kingston's The Women Warrior explores the tension of individual and collected identity through storytelling. In the three short stories, "No Name Woman," "White Tiger," and "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe," Kingston uses narratives as her main strategy to question the traditional Chinese community that remains undisrupted, and that continues to oppress women. In analyzing the autobiography, Kingston uses silence to show the oppression, while the storytelling serves as a form to find
The Woman Warrior, the fictional non-fiction novel by Maxine Hong Kingston, despite its positive commercial and critical reception, has been the subject of controversies over the years, especially among Asian-American readers and critics. While it is easy to read the Orientalist elements in her book as betraying Kingston’s attempt to distance herself from her mother and the Chinese culture, or as an indication that she unconsciously normalizes Western cultural traditions and favors them over Eastern
A central theme in The Woman Warrior by Maxine Kingston is silence. As the book progresses and the author opens up more about her past, she cures her silence and finds a way to stand out as a Chinese-American woman in the community. The different stories in the novel focus on the conflict between silence and communication to a person’s loved ones and refer to both emotional and physical struggles. She also uses her own frustration as a restricted Chinese American woman to break through the wall of
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
Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior Food strengthens us, without it we are weak. Eating has always been an important factor with families living in poor conditions. Often, those who could not help to produce more food are considered inferior or unworthy to eat. Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior is no exception, due to the relation it creates between eating and the strength of people. This is shown through the tale of Fa-Mu-Lan, the story of the eaters, and the references to the fellow