Examines Chinese-American MaxineHongKingston's semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional book "The Woman Warrior", especially the first chapter 'No Name Woman'.
Abstract This paper explains that Wendy Ho scrutinizes MaxineHongKingston's book "The Woman Warrior" in her essay, "Mother Daughter Writing and the Politics of Race and Sex in MaxineHongKingston's 'The Woman Warrior". The author points out that Ho shows how, in this book, especially the first chapter 'No Name Woman', the various gender and racial confines in Kingston's life affect her relationship with her mother and Kingston's own identity formation. The paper also relates the way that Ho believes that the process of story telling in 'No Name Woman' helps free Kingston to break the oppressions of both her Chinese culture and the patriarchal system in which she lived.
From the Paper "Through the story of her aunt, Kingston's mother warns her daughter "now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don't humiliate us. You wouldn't like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful." This quote exemplifies Ho's point that those in the Chinese society were especially fearful of women appearing to masculine, or at least, not appearing feminine; the survival of Chinese life depended on the maintenance of these strict roles."
A book review of MaxineHongKingston's "The Woman Warrior" and a discussion on the assimilation and integration of Chinese women emigrants in the United States.
Abstract This paper discusses the Chinese-American culture of emigrants by using MaxineHongKingston's book "The Woman Warrior." Summarizing the book and giving several excerpts, the paper talks about the assimilation and integration process and challenges a female Chinese emigrant goes through to find a life in the United States. The paper also reviews Kingston's mix of reality and fantasy seen through a folktale like point of view to emphasize her point of conflict for the female Chinese emigrant's struggle to adapt with a new culture and religion.
From the Paper "Chinese-American culture, especially that of emigrants and first generation children, is not shaped solely on the religious experiences of China, nor is it shaped solely on the American culture that they have come into. It is a melange of both. However, the mixture is not a perfectly homogenized blend. Different aspects of both fight to be the top priorities in the emigrant's/first-generation's life. The thought of assimilation is seen to be the goal of the emigrant, yet the soul still yearns for the spiritual side of things. The Emigrants hide their inner-self from the world, abandoning their past and shames of the China, and yet, real or not, the voice of their ancestors rings inside their hearts and the feelings for China and the Chinese tradition run rampant."
Abstract This paper examines MaxineHongKingston's short story " No Name Woman" finding that the tale is a profound exploration of traditional Chinese culture, the differences between Chinese culture and American culture, and a stern condemnation of the traditional roles of women in a Chinese society. The author discusses how te story is told through the eyes of three very diverse narrators, who all serve to convey a very different impression of the events.
From the Paper "In No Name Woman, Maxine Hong Kingston uses differences and similarities in the three separate narratives to explore the mores of traditional Chinese culture, the differences between Chinese culture and American culture, and ultimately to condemn the traditional roles of women in a Chinese society. Clearly, the disparate narratives of the mother, aunt, and narrator all reveal a very different viewpoint on Chinese culture. The mother is clearly supportive of the aunt's final fate, and symbolizes the traditional view of women in society. In contrast, the aunt's narrative allows the reader to understand the effect of a traditional view at a personal, individual level. The narrator's struggle to make sense of the story through her Americanized perspective also helps to reveal a great deal about traditional Chinese culture. Further, the juxtaposition of the narrators? exploration of the story and the narratives of the mother and aunt allows for a revelation of the differences between American and Chinese culture. The aunt and mother's traditional viewpoints allow us to better explore and understand the Americanized view of the daughter, and vice versa. The grim acceptance and disapproval of the mother's traditional views creates very little sympathy for the traditional view of women in Chinese culture."
Tags:maxine, hong, kingston, chinese, narrator, culture, story
Abstract This paper introduces, discusses, and analyzes the book, "The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts", by MaxineHongKingston. Specifically, it discusses why Kingston chooses to tell the stories of her mother and other female relatives, combining genres of autobiography, fantasy, fiction, and mythology, in order to illuminate her own identity.
From the Paper "In order to understand her relatives, and ultimately understand herself, Maxine Hong Kingston records the stories of her family in amusing and fanciful tales that point out the gap between the Chinese culture of her mother, and the American culture of Maxine and her siblings. Kingston's story is more than simply the age-old contest between mother and growing daughter, it is a struggle to understand a culture she is part of, and yet has never known. Often, her mother's actions make no sense to Maxine, living a comfortable life in the U.S. She has no understanding of hunger and want, and does not understand her mother's obsession with food, waste, and eating. She writes, "We'd have to face four- and five-day-old leftovers until we ate it all. The squid eye would keep appearing at breakfast and dinner until eaten. Sometimes brown masses sat on every dish."
Abstract This paper summarizes Kingston's novel about the relationship between past and present, mother and daughter. The paper explains how the novel is a book about self-discovery and that, through the juxtaposition of the social and political circumstances of the mother and daughter, as well as their personal experiences, the stories in Kingston's book lead the narrator in the novel to evolve into a confident woman with a better understanding of who she is.
From the Paper "The complexities involved with mother daughter relationships are seen in Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. In this combination of fact and fiction Kingston engages us by demonstrating the difficulties a Chinese-American girl encounters as she tries to relate to her Chinese born mother. Through a series of tales, the narrator discovers a her mother's character, which is inextricably connected to her past. The sharp contrast between mother and daughter exemplifies the socioeconomic and sociopolitical roles and constructs of its historical era. It is through the experience of her mother and those who came before her, that the narrator is able to embrace her present and future fully."
Abstract This paper summarizes and compares the memoirs of Frank McCourt and MaxineHongKingston. The paper looks at how each of the authors expresses him/herself and the motivation for writing their stories.
From the Paper "In their memoirs, The Woman Warrior and Angela's Ashes, Maxine Hong Kingston and Frank McCourt, respectively, present unique and complete views of worlds that widely diverge from the sort of lifestyles and experiences that are enjoyed by the average citizens of the United States of America. Part of the most simple reason for this is their "outsider" statues. As an immigrant, in Frank McCourt's case, and as the child of immigrant parents, in Maxine Hong Kingston's case, both memoirs are narratives of lives marked by travel, travail, and cultural differences that have an enormous and massive impact upon their authors? lives."
Abstract The paper examines MaxineHongKingston's memory novel, "The Woman Warrior." The paper discusses gender and cultural issues and focuses on the oppression and status of women in China and the U.S. The paper also explores how to blend the Chinese-American heritage with feminism.
From the Paper "Whether born in pre-World War II, China or post-World War II America, whether conventional or rebellious, the female characters in Maxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior" are united by various forms of the oppression of women. In China gender discrimination was much more severe than in the United States. The stories of the Chinese women in Kingston's memory novel reveal not only their inferior status in Chinese society, but also their passivity that in a sense makes them enablers of their role."
This paper discusses Virginia Woolf's "Shakespeare's Sister" and MaxineHongKingston's "No Name Woman", which describe the silencing of women's voices and the resurrection of these "disappeared" voices by the female author.
Abstract This paper explains that the lives of HongKingston and Woolf provide a dramatic contrast to the suppression of women as depicted in their works and that the success of HongKingston and other women writers represents the fulfillment of Woolf's dream for Shakespeare's "sister". The author points out that, in both "No Name Woman" and "Shakespeare's Sister", women are silenced not by society as a whole, but by the actions of their family and loved ones. The paper states that Judith in "Shakespeare's Sister" is resoundingly stifled by the Elizabethan society of Shakespeare's time; she is held firmly within her roles of a woman as child bearer, wife, and property; any attempt at creative talent is stifled.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Woolf's Essay "Shakespeare's Sister"
"No Name Woman" by MaxineHongKingston Resurrection by the Female Author
HongKingston, Woolf, and Women in Literature
Conclusion
From the Paper "Within "No Name Woman", Maxine Hong Kingston also depicts the resurrection of the "disappeared" woman. The narrator, a young Chinese-American woman, tells the story of her aunt, who was ostracized by her family for the crime of giving birth to an illegitimate child. Ling notes, "The author . . . breaks the family silence by writing about this rebel whom she calls 'my forebear'". In Kingston's story, the narrator has participated in the silencing of her aunt, causing her aunt to "disappear". Kingston writes, "there is more to this silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have. In the twenty years since I heard this story I have not asked for details nor said my aunt's name; 1 do not know it." Yet the narrator breaks this silence, and causes the story of the "disappeared" aunt to once again be told. Writes Hong Kingston, "My aunt haunts me-her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her"."
An analysis of Jeannette Walls' "The Glass Castle", Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel" and MaxineHongKingston's "The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts".
Abstract The paper attempts to show how Jeannette Walls' "The Glass Castle", Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel" and MaxineHongKingston's "The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts" all convey that the personal lives of women in the 20th and 21st centuries can have profound implications for the entire human race. The paper first describes Walls' experiences growing up with two nomadic parents whose unconventional lifestyle frequently put their children's well being into danger. The paper then discusses the gender issues in Kingston's "The Woman Warrior" and the difficult childhood in sub-Saharan Africa under the Muslim tradition for the females in Ali's "Infidel". The paper emphasizes how one's class, ethnicity and religious background are not mere traits, but strands that link us to a wider socio-political spectrum. The paper concludes that parents indeed play a major role in shaping our identity.
Outline:
A Rootless Childhood: Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle
Our Parents' Stories: MaxineHongKingston's The Woman Warrior
Battling Tradition: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel
Conclusion
From the Paper "How much of an effect do our parents really have on our development as individuals when we are growing up? Are different styles of parenting specific to different cultures? Are women treated in a more oppressive manner by their parents in traditional cultures, as opposed to more developed nations, such as the United States of America? These are some of the questions I found myself asking this past semester after reading three memoirs of growing up under conditions that might be subtly described as "less than normal." Jeannette Walls's book The Glass Castle addresses the author's experiences growing up with two nomadic parents - an alcoholic father and a schoolteacher-turned-painter mother - whose unconventional lifestyle frequently puts their children's well being into danger. But our parents do more than merely teach us morals in our first few years of life; they also tie us to a larger history. The struggle with tradition and one's personal history comes to the forefront in two other family memoirs, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts."
Abstract This paper reviews the book, "Woman Warrior," written by MaxineHongKingston. The paper examines how Kingston uses dream and fantasy to tell her story. The paper explains that, for Kingston, dreams and fantasies are equally as important as real-life narratives, which only provide a sliver of the truth and a partial rendering of a person's experiences. The paper contends that all people spend a considerable number of hours dreaming, and Kingston's approach to memoirs honors and respects this essential aspect of human existence. The paper explains that dreams mirror and reflect our psychic impressions of daily life, and they offer insight into our egos, alter-egos, hopes, and fears.
From the Paper ""Night after night my mother would talk-story until we fell asleep. I couldn't tell where the stories left off and the dreams began, her voice the voice of heroines in my sleep," (19). Maxine Hong Kingston's surreal memoir Woman Warrior weaves between dream life and waking reality, especially in the two chapters "White Tigers" and "Shaman." In these two chapters of the book, Kingston includes the rich imagery, content, and themes of her dreams, nightmares, and fantasies to more clearly illustrate her mundane daily experiences as a Chinese immigrant in the United States. In many ways her dreams more accurately reflect her psychological development, dreams, and desires than her real-life narratives do."
Abstract This paper reviews the novel "The Woman Warrior" by Kingston, focusing on the issues of women in culturally different and foreign scenarios. The paper presents a background on the author MaxineHongKingston, as a woman born to a Chinese family in California and surrounded by Chinese culture and people. This, the writer believes, reflects in her writing. The paper presents the issues Kingston wrote of including women in Chinese culture and the mixing of the American and Chinese traditions.
From the Paper "Maxine Hong Kingston was born in 1940 in Stockton, California, to a Chinese immigrant family, and she grew up and lived in a Chinese community that followed the customs and tradition of its native land. The expectation for women in traditional Chinese society was as a wife or a slave, though in Kingston's family this expectation was considered an underachievement. Kingston herself would often be bombarded by negative comments directed towards her and her sister because the people in this more traditional Chinese community did not recognize the value of girl children."
Tags: culture, differences, racism, society, tradition, community
Abstract This paper analyzes how the abstract idea that specific facts and events are inconsequential when looking at a theme or idea as a whole is used in the novels, "The Things They Carried" by Tim O?Brien, and "The Woman Warrior" by MaxineHongKingston. It shows how, through the use of talk story, as in Kingston's novel and the basis of a "true war story" in "The Things they Carried", the respective authors use the idea to portray the true meaning of the work. It looks at how both Kingston and O?Brien use this twist in a story to fully develop the themes portrayed and to get across the true meaning of their stories and what they want the reader to take away from the stories.
From the Paper "The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston is a non-fiction story of a Chinese-American girl growing up in California. Throughout the novel Kingston uses the talk stories from her mother to outline what a true woman warrior is and who Maxine's mother expected her to be. The first example of this is the legend of Fa Mu Lan told in the chapter ?White Tigers.?2 The story tells of the warrior Fa Mu Lan who manages to be everything to everyone, able to satisfy the role of wife and mother while still leading her people to victory in battle. Fa Mu Lan becomes what every Chinese woman wants to become, the powerful warrior that protects her family and the nurturing mother that raises her children."
Tags: twist, nconsequential, vietnam, chinese, talk, war, story
Abstract This paper discusses the central role played by aunts, the sisters of fathers or mothers who serve as surrogate female role models, in MaxineHongKingston's "The Woman Warrior". The paper describes the main characters, claiming that they are not warrior women but actually embody the antithesis of the woman warrior-heroine. The paper contends that the protagonist of the story, a woman warrior, taught Kingston how to navigate the tricky path of being Chinese-American.
From the Paper "No-Name Woman and Moon Orchid are not necessarily innately weak; in fact, Kingston attempts to imbue both aunts with symbolic power and therefore both women are catalysts for Kingston's growth and self-realization. Brave Orchid's talk-story of No-Name Woman stimulates Kingston's fertile imagination. Filling in the gaps of her mysterious aunt's life, Kingston imagines what went on in her aunt's psyche to lead her to her fate. As with many of the incidents and tales in The Woman Warrior, the story of No-Name Woman could indeed be a fiction, a tall tale her mother drew up for the sole purpose of frightening her daughter away from premarital sex. The No-Name Woman tale could have been a family myth, one passed on from mother to daughter for generations for that very purpose. Even if the aunt was real, Kingston has no way of discovering the truth and is thus forced to complete the picture of No-Name Woman herself."
Abstract This paper examines how MaxineHongKingston's work "Silence" is a demonstration of the many significant ways of how preconceived notions based on history and culture effect the ways in which an individual perceives what is and what is not important. It looks at how Kingston builds imagery around her experiences in her two very different schools and how the experience within each, as she sees it today, created her response to it and therefore her development of understanding.
From the Paper "Kingston recognized differences in the way that culture played a role in the meaning and importance of words, or she did as she looked back upon her confusion, as a child. She speaks of her inability to understand the words "I" and "you." Culturally the importance of "I" was different, the Chinese character for "I" was much more complicated while this single letter word seemed to mean so much to the American's that it was to be boldly written in capital. To Kingston this was a contradiction a poignant misrepresentation of the individual. "
Abstract The writer of this paper details the not so subtle appearances of sexism throughout MaxineHongKingston's novel "No Name Woman." In one instance the author's primary vehicle for sexism is religion, in which the church uses the blind zeal of a devout woman as a tool of sexist repression. The writer contends that the women in Kingston's novel are perceived as property and are trapped in their traditional Asian roles. This paper also considers the possibility that the author as well as her characters are inundated with guilt and stripped of self-worth by their gender.
From the Paper "A facilitator of the first order, the primary vehicle of sexism is religion. Religion is a community 'force majuer' of the devout, 'The old woman from the next field swept a broom through the air and loosed the spirits-of-the-broom over our heads.' When the devout is a woman, the church uses her own blind zeal as a tool of sexist repression. It is by this avenue that a woman will now actively participate in the repression of all women, including herself, fearing no other role available in religious society for herself, 'As the villager closed in, we could see that, some of them, probably men and women we knew well, wore white masks." Women become perceived in the trapped roles as property; a controlled thing to exercise control over, 'After my grandparents gave their daughter away to her husband's family, they had dispensed all the adventure and all the property."
