The Woman Warrior: a Personal Novel of Maxine Hong Kingston’
Maxine Hong Kingston explores her family history and cultural and personal identity in her highly acclaimed novel The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts through the unique application of melding myth and reality to create a fantastical autobiography. With recurring themes such as sexism against women, Chinese-American cultural differences, family ideals, and unfamiliarity, Kingston showcases her exploration of her family’s cultural history through mixing myth and memory in order to discover her personal identity as a person under the minority titles of being both Chinese American and a girl. Kingston uses her womanhood, adjusting to the American settings, familial and cultural values, and her relationship with her mother as the cultural and social influences of her work to help discover what her identity is.
As a girl herself born to a culture that treats women as inferior, Kingston’s womanhood plays an important role in her personal identity and writing. “White Tigers” in The Woman Warrior accurately depicts Kingston’s dealing with her womanhood. Half of this chapter focuses on Kingston’s embodiment of the Chinese mythical woman warrior Fa Mulan while the following half focuses on Kingston’s actual childhood. In the childhood portion, Kingston explains how she lived the life of an oppressed girl where her Chinese immigrant family and emigrant neighbors viewed girls as shameful, which serves as one of the social and cultural influences of her writing and her life. Kingston mentions how the emigrant neighbors would comment that “feeding girls is feeding cowbirds” or how “there’s no profit in raising girls. Better to raise geese than girls” that her parents were ashamed to take her and her sisters out together (Kingston 46). When her Great-Uncle asked her and her siblings who wants to go out for shopping, he would yell “no girls!” and leave her and her sisters hanging (Kingston 47). It is apparent that Kingston had to deal with the sexism of her culture, and her negative depiction of the sexist treatment on her for being a girl in “White Tigers” suggests her disapproval of this cultural ideal. In contrast, the Mulan portion showcases Kingston’s, as the narrator, self-embodiment as the woman warrior of Fa Mulan. This fantastical embodiment is meant to mirror her struggle as an oppressed Chinese girl and convey her desire for the approval, respect, and acceptance that she did not receive in reality. In the Mulan portion, the narrator is trained to be a woman warrior to lead an army. Upon return to her village after her training, she is welcomed with gratitude like a man would. She notes that her parents” killed a chicken and steamed it whole, as if they were welcome home a son,” and that her family “surrounded [her] with so much love” (Kingston 33). Her parents carve a message for revenge on her back as a way to honor her sacrifice. Her mother notes that through this carving on the narrator’s back, “wherever [she goes], whatever happens to [her], people will know [her parents’ and her] sacrifice,” meaning that honor and responsibility are placed on this woman shoulders just like a male soldier would have; her parents respect her enough to give her this responsibility (Kingston 34). In addition, as the narrator prepares to leave for war, she mentions that as she puts on her men’s clothes and armor on, the villagers would comment “how beautiful [she] looks” (Kingston 36). The Kingston’s woman warrior persona in this section of “White Tigers” serves as a foil to her actual life as a normal, oppressed Chinese American girl. In contrast to her woman warrior fantasy, she doesn’t feel that she is as paramount in her real life. Her fantasy depicts her wishes for the acceptance and relevance among her family that she would feel as a female soldier. With that being said, “White Tigers” is a clear depiction of Chinese womanhood through Kingston’s perspective. Through this merging of fantasy and reality, Kingston “explores the nature of Chinese womanhood in terms of its potentials as well as its limitations” (Lan). One could argue, however, that even in Kingston’s Mulan fantasy Chinese women are still bound under national and cultural values. According to Feng Lan’s account in “The Female Individual and the Empire: A Historicist Approach to Mulan and Kingston’s Woman Warrior,” Kingston’s woman warrior story captures “the dilemma of the Chinese female caught in the contradiction between individual pursuit and communal commitment under specific historical circumstances–a dilemma that sheds light on the shared identity of Kingston’s Mulan and the canonized ‘Confucian’ Mulan, both of whom end up serving as the tool for the grand scheme of national salvation” (Lan). Although Kingston embodies a more respected, powerful figure in the woman warrior fantasy, she still lives among the cultural ideal that women are inferior and treated like slaves–women’s feet are still bound, the baron retorts that “girls are maggots in the rice,” and even the narrator says to her parents-in-laws that she will stay with them after finishing her soldier duties “doing farmwork and housework, and giving [them] more sons” (Kingston 45). The similarity between the fantasy and reality is the Chinese ideal that women are shameful and meant to be slaves, while the difference between that fantasy and reality shows Kingston’s individual goal of gaining recognition and respect despite that shame on Chinese women in both stories. This individual desire depicts Kingston’s disapproval of this social and cultural influence of oppression of women in Chinese society and conveys part of her personal identity–the strive to become a woman respected by many especially in her own family and culture despite sexist views.
Kingston’s Chinese American nationality is another influence in her writing in the sense that she is stuck between two worlds: a country she was born in but cautious about because of its “ghosts,” and a country she only knows about through her mother’s stories but has never even seen before. Kingston takes on the usual Asian American immigrant situation where she is a child of first generation parents stuck between her native home and her parents’ native home. This situation puts her in a position where she has to somehow demonstrate her true Chinese loyalty and understand what her Chinese culture is despite being a second generation child adjusting to America’s “ghosts,” bigotry, and unfamiliarity. For example, in “Tongue Tied,” Kingston notes that she, along with second generation Chinese Americans, “can’t sing ‘land where [their] fathers died,” and that her mother says that “[they], like the ghosts, have no memories.” As Ruth Maxy explained in “The East is Where Things Begin: Writing the Ancestral Homeland in Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston,” the second generation Chinese American children’s “lack of lived Chinese memories–and the first’ generation’s varying ability to explain their past clearly–leads to conflict and confusion about what they believe” (Maxy). This is Kingston’s issue–trying to understand a country that she is supposed to honor, but cannot understand because she and the second generation are born in a new world, and therefore have no real memories of any relation to China, only stories they hear. And as they try to make sense of a country based on the stories and memories that their parents dump on them, they also have to “make sense of their own lives in America” (Maxy). For Kingston, she mentions in “Tongue Tied” that it was when she “found out [she] had to talk that school became a misery, that the silence became a misery” because of her lack of comfort with English and with being a minority among the students. Her tongue was tied by her responsibility to China since Chinese was the language to be spoken at home. Kingston was not alone–she also mentions that the other Chinese students “did not talk either, so [she] knew the silence had to do with being a Chinese girl.” In American school, she would be silent, while in Chinese school, she and the other students “chanted together, voices rising and falling, loud and soft”; this contrast of her loudness between American school and Chinese school displays Kingston’s self struggle to make sense of her American side while being tied by the language and memories of her Chinese side. Her bicultural self-identity grants her the “aims of combating racism; community building; and cultural self-empowerment through giving a voice to the first and second generation” (Maxy). Kingston must carry on the responsibility to establish her personal, individual voice that represents the first generation’s old country and the second generation’s new country.
Lastly, Kingston’s relationship with her mother plays a huge role in exploring her identity. Her mother, labeled as Brave Orchid in The Woman Warrior, plays the role of a mother to Kingston, her storyteller of China’s memories, and almost like a foil to Kingston. It is clear that the narrator in The Woman Warrior yearns for her mother’s approval and acceptance of her since her mother always favored her siblings over her and was never really fond of her; in the reality portion of “White Tigers,” the narrator tells Brave Orchid that she got straight A’s, to which her mother brushes off by just telling her “a true story about a girl who saved her village” (Kingston 45). In the end of “Shaman,” her mother comes into her room and wishes that her daughter would come back to her parents but accepts her daughter’s decision to not stay, which shows the approval from her mother that the narrator always wanted. Her mother explains that “there’s only one thing that [she] wants anymore. [She] wants [the narrator to stay with the family], not wandering like a ghost from Romany,” so that then, she and her father “[are] happy” (Kingston 107); from this, we can see how her mother truly feels love and affection for her daughter. After the narrator explains why she cannot stay with them, her mother still accepts her decision, saying that “it’s better, then, for [her] to stay away” and that “[she] can come for visits” (Kingston 108). This truly satisfies the narrator and lets her know of her mother’s approval and affection for her that she longed for; she explains that “a weight lifted from [her],” and that “the world is somehow lighter” (Kingston 108). It’s as if Kingston has fulfilled a lifelong goal of being accepted and acknowledged by her mother. This scene insinuates the mother’s role as a foil to Kingston since throughout the book her mother was conveyed to be one who did not always favor her, but instead showed affection in this scene which indicates the narrator’s yearning for Brave Orchid’s acceptance. Her mother’s story telling also plays a role in her writing. Throughout the novel we can see that Brave Orchid talks stories of family history, Chinese stories, and stories of the American “ghosts that are meant to define the bicultural self-identities of her second generation children. According to Jeane Barker-Nunn’s “Telling the Mother’s Story: History and Connection in the Autobiographies of Maxine Hong Kingston and Kim Chernin,” Barker-Nunn comments that although Kingston “must break [her] mother’s views of the world in order to enter their own American lives, [she] also conveys a profound and moving sense of the continuities and connections they share” (Barker-Nunn). By this quote, it is implied that Kingston, though on a journey to discover her individual voice, discovers connections with her mother in the sense that she feels ties with China through her mother’s stories. This exploration of self-identity mixed with the cultural identity instilled in her mother’s native country shows “a vision in which the lines between past and present, self and other are slippery and overlapping. Kingston sets out to writer her own story and finds herself telling her mother’s” (Barker-Nunn). These all suggest that as Kingston’s identity, along with her American experiences, is formed and influenced by her mother’s storying telling of memories; in “No Name Woman,” for example, her mother’s story telling of her no-name aunt who was condemned by her own family for her adultery and suicide relates to the sexism instilled in the family, Kingston’s womanhood, and her knowledge of a family member she has never seen from a country she has never seen. Kingston’s words are influenced by her mother’s words in the path to her self-identity.
Kingston’s other acclaimed novel Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book tells the story of Wittman Ah Sing, an English major who graduated from UC Berkeley and experiences in San Francisco in the 1960s. Wittman draws away from the stereotypical Chinese character, getting Cs at Berkeley, being tall and capturing a “hippy-style.” The novel follows Wittman trying to find out who he is as a Chinese American and as Wittman Ah Sing as he tries to make a living in San Francisco. As Jonna Mackin mentions in “Split Infinities: The Comedy of Performative Identity in Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey,” Wittman has to “solve how to relate ‘Chinese’ to ‘American’ in a culturally doubled but nationally singular version of citizenship” (Mackin). This account of Wittman’s goal in Tripmaster Monkey is the very essence of Kingston’s goal of discovering her self-identity–the obligation to connect Chinese culture with American culture as a bicultural Chinese American second generation child. In the novel, Wittman attempts to utilize the words of others to define who he is—his “ironic self-reflection as a Chinese American who has to use others’ words to express his own difference” (Mackin). Wittman’s love interest, Nanci, tells Wittman that “[he] sound black,” to which Wittman asserts that “monkey see, monkey do?” (Kingston 32). This shows Wittman’s attempt to become a new, different kind of man, employing a different voice or persona into himself to help define who he is. The different voices he uses are those derived from American culture, therefore Wittman, as he struggles to discover what it means to be Chinese, overlaps his American persona with his Chinese persona. This is directly related to Kingston’s experience of juggling the American life and the Chinese life, whether it’s through the different voices of America like in Wittman’s personas, or through the different voices of native, historical China like in Brave Orchid’s words.
Kingston’s writing is the epitome of a bicultural writer born to the second generation of Chinese immigrants trying to make sense of two worlds while dealing with personal identity issues such as her womanhood and her relationship with her mother. From her writing, one can see her exploration of her self-identity through social and cultural influences such as the sexism instilled in her Chinese family, the Chinese American struggle of adjusting to America while having ties to her parents’ native country, and her mother. Kingston achieves the goal of giving her an individual voice that is representative of the first and second generation of Chinese Americans, women oppressed under sexism, and her mother.
