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Essays about the woman warrior setting
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
Essays about the woman warrior setting
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The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston is a collection of memoirs, a blend of Kingston’s autobiography with Chinese folklore. The book is divided into five interconnected chapters: No Name Woman, White Tigers, Shaman, At the Western Palace, and A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe. In No Name Woman, three characters are present: Kingston, Kingston’s mother, and Kingston’s aunt. This section starts off with Kingston’s mother retelling the story of her aunt and her shameful past where her aunt took part in an adulterous relationship and expressed her sexuality openly, then Kingston’s interpretation of this story, and later what the story ultimately means to Kingston - the act of the family forgetting this aunt entirely. In White Tigers, it tells of the myth of Fa Mu Lan. It begins with Kingston recounting her mother’s story of Fa Mu Lan and her training where an elderly couple trains Fa Mu Lan into a warrior for fifteen years, then Fa Mu Lan’s role as a leading warrior and wife in which she replaces her father in battle and seeks revenge and lastly Kingston’s comparison to Fa Mu Lan’s life with hers.
In Shaman, Kingston recounts her mother’s story of when her mother was a student and doctor. It starts off with Kingston’s mother at the To Keung School of Midwifery, then her mother, Brave Orchid’s, return to her village, and finally Kingston’s mother telling Kingston of her life in America and how she tells Kingston that every person is a “ghost”. At the Western Palace, it tells of Kingston’s remembrances of her elderly mother and her mother’s sister, Lovely Orchid. It begins with Brave Orchid meeting her sister Lovely Orchid at the airport after not seeing each other for 30 years, then welcoming ...
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...spectives that it makes it quite difficult for a reader to see the progression of the autobiography and the progression of Kingston’s growth from a child to a woman. However, growth is evident in the narrative and one could see that the many facets of Kingston – her cruelty, her teenage rebelliousness, her meekness, and her strength. She grows from a child who could not speak for herself in school to a woman who can speak her mind on paper. She grows from a child who cowered from her mother’s story telling to a woman who accepts the dark crevices of her past. Kingston grew in her book from a person who suffered under scrutiny and conflicting values and customs to a woman who has found her identity and has composed beautiful prose about her heritage.
Works Cited
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. New York: Knopf, 1976.
For Kingston, The Woman Warrior signifies more than five chapters of talk-stories synthesized together. Within each chapter of the memoirs, Kingston engraves the method in which she undertook to discover her discrete voice. The culture clash between her mother and Kingston accumulated her struggles and insecurities, resulting in Kingston’s climax during her tirade. However, what Kingston accentuates the most is that the a breakthrough from silence requires one to reject a society’s
The Warrior Ethos, by Steven Pressfield depicts the warrior’s mentality from ancient times to the present through a variety of different aspects and stories. In The Warrior Ethos, Pressfield states that men are not born with the certain qualities that make a good warrior, but instead are inculcated through years of training and indoctrination, stating at an early age. He shows how different societies have been able to instill the same or very similar ideals throughout history while maintaining their own unique characteristics. Things have changed from ancient Sparta, where parents would be enthusiastic about their children going to war, and even more elated upon learning they died valorous in battle. These days, most parents are a lot
Imagination is a quality that everyone has, but only some are capable of using. Maxine Hong Kingston wrote “No Name Woman” using a great deal of her imagination. She uses this imagination to give a story to a person whose name has been forgotten. A person whose entire life was erased from the family’s history. Her story was not written to amuse or entertain, but rather to share her aunts’ story, a story that no one else would ever share. The use of imagination in Kingston’s creative nonfiction is the foundation of the story. It fills the gaps of reality while creating a perfect path to show respect to Kingston’s aunt, and simultaneously explains her disagreement with the women in her culture.
In the chapter "White Tigers" from her book The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston first fantasizes of a Chinese woman warrior before switching back to the reality of her American life as a woman. Using her imagination, Kingston dreams of a strong female avenger who manages to satisfy often opposing roles, such as warrior and mother and who receives honor and respect from her family. Yet in her true life, Kingston faces a much different world in which she struggles to fight for her beliefs and encounters disapproval from her parents. Employing her fantasy which starkly contrasts her real life, Kingston provides an alternate, more liberated view of a woman's role and abilities which reflects her own aspirations and wishes for an ideal life.
The novel shadows the life of Janie Crawford pursuing the steps of becoming the women that her grandmother encouraged her to become. By the means of doing so, she undergoes a journey of discovering her authentic self and real love. Despise the roller-coaster obstacles, Janie Crawford’s strong-will refuses to get comfortable with remorse, hostility, fright, and insanity.
There is a resounding tone of guilt and irritation in this last page of the first story for the Woman Warrior. Here the reader learns how a child can become a victim, but also involuntarily become a passive advocate of their parent’s moral choices about the past. By not speaking of her aunt or questioning her parents’ silence, Maxine becomes a part of this dead woman’s chastisement.
Trying to hold the homefront together while there was a war waging abroad was not an
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 or may not be real. There spirits are there but physical appearance is a mystery.
Jamaica Kincaid develops the interesting and amiable character of Xuela Claudette Richardson in her 1996 novel The Autobiography of My Mother. In contrast to other members in her community, Xuela is unique and unpredictable in an instable setting. Other characters in the novel such as her father, her half-sister, and the men she engages in sexual behavior with follow a pattern in their lives, which others appreciate and expect. Xuela, however, does not follow any guidelines in the manner that she thinks and behaves; while she is not hurt by the lack of love that she feels, she definitely identifies and accepts it. This sense of acceptance of herself and the acknowledgement that no one else is like her is what makes Xuela the free, unparalleled, and slightly defiant individual that she is.
I think that women were so eager to see men go to war because, firstly
Kingston’s “No Name Woman” is a story that revolves around morals, society and family expectations, and women role in society. Kingston writes the story of her aunt that committed suicide in China and she has never heard of until her mother spoke of her once. The purpose of Kingston story is to show women role in China and how women were trap in their society.
Throughout history women have been underestimated. Society as a whole is patriarchal, and even though women have mead great strides in gaining equality, there are still crimes and prejudice against women. Women are capable of great feats, if they are given a chance. Some women ignored all social standards and managed to accomplish incredible things that changed the course of history.
Kingston’s mother takes many different approaches to reach out to her daughter and explain how important it is to remain abstinent. First, she tells the story of the “No Name Woman”, who is Maxine’s forgotten aunt, “’ Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her can happen to you. Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born”’ (5), said Maxine’s mother. 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. The entire family is affected by one’s actions. She says, “‘Don’t humiliate us’” (5) because the whole village knew about the pregnant aunt and ravaged the family’s land and home because of it. Maxine tries asking her mother in-depth questions about this situation, but her m...
The beginning of the novel introduces the reader to Esther O'Malley Robertson as the last of a family of extreme women. She is sitting in her home, remembering a story that her grandmother told her a long time ago. Esther is the first character that the reader is introduced to, but we do not really understand who she is until the end of the story. Esther's main struggle is dealing with her home on Loughbreeze Beach being torn down, and trying to figure out the mysteries of her family's past.
Esther is introduced to the reader via a conversation that she has with Mrs. Dickson, an African American woman in her fifties. Esther’s low self-confidence is evident