Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior

Taylor’s mother worked hard to keep her from “fitting the mold” of girls in this town; get pregnant in high school, get married at a young age, and stay in this town forever. Taylor did not want this life for herself so she did everything in her power to make a better life for herself. Throughout the course of the novel Taylor grew as a person because she learned the importance of family, opened her eyes to new experiences, and grew to be more apparent of the realities of her world.

Throughout the book, “The Western Place” , by Maxine Hong Kingston, there is a differential gap between the two sisters who come from two different sides of the world. A lot of differences between the two sisters and their personal lifestyles comes from one sister living in America as a Chinese-American and the other sister living in China. In the story Brave Orchid who is the sister that is brave, outspoken, and sometimes cruel sees life as a bundle of opportunities to take with no regret. However, it is different when her sister Moon Orchid comes into town from China because she is the complete opposite. Moon Orchid is rather humble, timid, and quiet while she observes the lifestyle of her sister and nieces and nephews.

In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston blurs fiction and reality using a poetic, singsong writing style, blending sentences together using sentence structure and diction. She also relies heavily on symbols to reveal inner conflict that she had while growing up Chinese American, trying to determine what was authentically Chinese and what was illusion.

This complex novel takes place in Greenville, South Carolina where Jacqueline spends most of younger childhood with her Grandma Georgina, older brother Hope, her older sister Adella, and her mother. Jacqueline was born in Columbus, Ohio where she lived there with her family for a couple of years, until her mother and father got divorced. Jacqueline never saw her dad after she moved to Greenville. Jacqueline cherishes every moment in Greenville. She loves the dirt on her feet, the fresh fruity scent in the air. She believes in the people in her town marching for their rights. After a couple years of living in Greenville Jacqueline’s mother moves her family to Brooklyn, New York. Jacqueline's aunt, Caroline lives in Brooklyn. After a couple

Cultures can shape the identities of individuals. Kingston identity was shape by Chinese and Chinese American culture. "No Name Woman," begins with a talk-story, about Kingston’ aunt she never knew. The aunt had brought disgrace upon her family by having an illegitimate child. In paragraph three, “she could not have been pregnant, you see, because her husband had been gone for years” (621). This shows that Kingston’s aunt had an affair with someone and the result was her pregnancy. She ended up killing herself and her baby by jumping into the family well in China. After hearing the story, Kingston is not allowed to mention her aunt again. The ideas of gender role-play an important role in both cultures. Kingston in her story “No Name

The memoir, The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, is about Maxine’s childhood in America after her mother moved to America from China. The author, Maxine Hong Kingston, talks about Brave Orchid, Maxine’s mother, to show that extrinsic factors influenced Maxine’s ability to become a woman warrior. The first extrinsic factor that is significant is American and Chinese culture. This impacts Maxine Hong Kingston’s ability to be a warrior because the cultures are very different and can change her opinions on people, “ghosts”, and herself. To start off, in the first chapter, “No Name Woman”, Brave Orchid tells Maxine a story about Maxine’s aunt who is the No Name Woman.

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.

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 of American and Chinese schools and the role models of Brave Orchid, Fa Mu Lan, and Moon Orchid. Her education by these counselors consequently causes her to abandon her search for an escort, the bird to be found somewhere in the measureless sky,

Maxine Kingston in “The Women Warrior” presents a traditional Chinese society that anticipates women not to decide what is best for them all by themselves. Kingston creates a woman who goes beyond this ritual culture constraint and who take up

Throughout the novel The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, the past is incorporated into the present through talk-stories combined into each chapter. Kingston uses talk-stories, to examine the intermingling of Chinese myths and lived experiences. These stories influence the life of the narrator as the past is constantly spoken about from the time she is young until the novel ends and she becomes an adult. Kingston incorporates two cultures. She is not a direct recipient of Chinese culture, but she has her own sense of talk-story, that she learns from her mother, which tells the old Chinese stories with a sense of myth, in a new American way. This is a way of weaving two cultures together, bringing the Chinese past into her present American life.

Her reaction to the pearls, a symbol of the materialistic chains binding her to Tom, leads her to cry and consider breaking off the marriage (60). However, Jordan rushes to find “her mother's maid and locks the door”, reinforcing Daisy’s objectification by silencing her voice

Kingston tells her mother that she is tired of keeping everything a secrecy and not being able to distinguish what is real or what are lies when her mother talks story. Kingston is just tired of living in silence and needs a voice for herself to be able to lead her life the way she want to. Kingston states, “I don’t want to listen to any more of your stories; they have no logic. The scramble me up. You lie with stories.

As part of the first generation of Chinese-Americans, Maxine Hong Kingston writes about her struggle to distinguish her cultural identity through an impartial analysis of her aunt’s denied existence.  In “No Name Woman,” a chapter in her written memoirs, Kingston analyzes the possible reasons behind her disavowed aunt’s dishonorable pregnancy and her village’s subsequent raid upon her household.  And with a bold statement that shatters the family restriction to acknowledge the exiled aunt, Kingston states that, “… [she] alone devote pages of paper to her [aunt]...”   With this premeditated declaration, Kingston rebelliously breaks the family’s cultural taboo to

Kingston gives a voice to many of the voiceless women in the book, resulting in them discovering their identities as individuals. The theme of finding one’s own personal voice is a major theme in Kingston’s memoir. She makes various references to the physical and emotional struggle throughout the text by seeing the silence of the women in her family and Chinese culture. By adding her experience as a Chinese-American woman she tries to discover her voice. For Kingston, silence basically equals to a lack of voice, which she associates with the loss of identity as a woman.

Kingston begins The Woman Warrior by writing a story which started with her mother insisting that she “must not tell anyone...what I am about to tell you.” (Kingston 3). Kingston’s first written words are a defiance of this silencing. Silence is a motif that permeates the entirety of The Woman Warrior; Kingston