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The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts

Author	Maxine Hong Kingston
Language	English
Genre	nonfictional memoir
Publisher	Vintage International
Publication date	1975
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	209
ISBN	0-679-72188-6

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is a nonfictional memoir by Maxine Hong Kingston, published by Vintage Books in 1975. It is semi-autobiographical, incorporating many elements of fiction. Through the book, Kingston explores ethnicity and gender roles, especially in the context of her experience as a Chinese-American woman. She creates stories by filling in the blanks of her mother's talk-story.

The Woman Warrior has been reported by the Modern Language Association as the most commonly taught text in modern university education, used in disciplines that include American literature, anthropology, Asian studies, composition, education, psychology, sociology, and women's studies. Though widely praised by critics, the book has been criticized by fellow Chinese American author Frank Chin as perpetuating racist stereotypes.

The Woman Warrior is an example of how Kingston likes to experiment with various genres, as she weaves together myth, fiction, nonfiction, autobiography, and history in what is sometimes both true and imagined. Thirty years later, The Woman Warrior still remains one of the most widely taught books on college campuses. In addition, it has also won the National Book Critics Circle Awardand has been named one of Time Magazine's top nonfiction books of the 1970's. The Woman Warrior is currently considered "the most widely taught book by a living writer in US colleges and universities."

Background

Prior to writing her first book, The Woman Warrior, Kingston wrote all poems, prose, and short stories in the first-person singular. In fact, it was not until the fourth chapter of The Woman Warrior that she “felt the claustrophobia very strongly” and feeling like she had to overcome this self interest, she began to use third person. She claims that she was able to step outside of herself in writing “At the Western Palace” by thinking of I Love Lucy and using the typical form of the episode at the end, where they always have a confrontation, similar to the one had by the sisters and the husband. However, “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe” switches back to first person, as Kingston returns to her own story, picking up from where her mother’s story ends. When commenting on this part of the story, she says that she wanted to show the reader who this first-person narrator, “this ‘I,’” is. Kingston acknowledges that in her first three sections of The Woman Warrior she creates a world, where the reader may believe what they see; she wanted to show them that it could, in fact, just be “some dumb kid who sits in a corner”. In China Men, which is a companion to The Woman Warrior, Kingston continues to struggle with her voice, as well as, her strength as a writer/listener and finally towards the end, after getting rid of the narrator, she noticed a “psychological improvement” and feels like a more integrated person.

However, there were also benefits in The Woman Warrior being a very self-centered I-book, as Kingston calls it. The autobiography aspect of the book allowed Maxine to better understand herself in relation to her family, as well as her place in the world.

Kingston said that in writing The Woman Warrior she fell into a habit of writing all types of information and stories down. Anything - until some of it started falling into place. It was this habit that allowed Kingston to complete The Woman Warrior in just three years while teaching at a boarding school that demanded she be on call twenty four hours a day.

Kingston reflects on The Woman Warrior as having Chinese rhythms captured by the American language. She writes, as well as, adds to and translates the stories of people whose experiences are in Chinese into her language, English.

Writing in this “fusion language,” which is an American language with Asian tones and accents, or rhythm, is a way that Kingston brings together Chinese and Western experiences. This “melding” of the two experiences –the images and metaphors-- is what makes Kingston’s style her own. Kingston admits that one of the ways she works to bring these two together is to speak Chinese while writing or typing in English.

Kingston also admits to keeping only the necessary cultural imagery, out of fear that people would think her to be “exotic.” The ones she did allow to remain in The Woman Warrior were those that were so integrated in her life that she thinks of them as American imagery. However, reflecting back on her first book, she now finds that they do in fact, look “really Chinese.”

Other fears that Kingston had while writing The Woman Warrior was of telling the truth. Aware that her parents were illegal aliens and that many of their stories were enough to get them deported, Kingston struggled with this fact in her writing. Being warned not to tell these family secrets, she would write them. Her mother’s talk-stories are what mainly comprises The Woman Warrior.

Kingston in September 2006

Plot Summary

The book is divided into five interconnected stories. In the first story, "No Name Woman", Kingston's narrator describes the suicide of her aunt, as told by her mother, after she gave birth to an illegitimate child. The narrator is warned to never again speak of her un-named aunt, but still creates a history for her in her memoir. In the second story, "White Tigers", the narrator creates a fantastic allegory to describe her childhood. She imagines herself as a version of the legendary Chinese woman warrior, Fa Mulan, who, having learned the warrior's arts from an elderly couple who are hundreds of years old, raises an army and overthrows the corrupt government. After her battles, she takes up the traditional woman's roles of mother and wife. In "Shaman", the third story, the narrator describes her mother's experience in Chinese medical school. Mixing fantasy and autobiography, she details her mother's physical and mental battles with spirits and ghosts. In the fourth chapter, "At the Western Palace", she describes her aunt Moon Orchid's mental breakdown after she emigrates to the United States from China in order to find her estranged husband. In the final story, "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe", she describes her childhood experiences in the California public school system, and her parents' attitudes toward her. She closes the book with a reinterpretation of the story of early third century Chinese poet Ts'ai Yen, who, like the narrator, had to learn to sing in a foreign tongue.

In the fourth chapter, “At the Western Palace,” Kingston writes about her mother, Brave Orchid, and her sister, Moon Orchid, who is moving to America from Hong Kong. Brave Orchid’s niece accompanies her to the airport, along with Brave’s own children, who do not tend to their own mother as much as their submissive, culturally-rooted cousin. When the sisters finally meet after thirty long years, they are both surprised at how old the other looks. Moon Orchid’s impression of her sister’s children is that they are rude and untraditional and she has trouble fitting into her new environment. Brave Orchid’s purpose for bringing Moon to America is to reunite her with her estranged husband, who has not asked for her to join him in America in all these years that he’s been gone. Brave tries to get her sister to go see him, but she declines. Moon Orchid’s main objection is one deeply rooted in Chinese tradition; since her husband continued to send her money and pay for their daughter’s education and expenses, she believes that he is being faithful to his duties. Finally, Moon makes the trip with Brave and Brave’s son to go see her husband. When they arrive, much to her son’s humiliation, Brave Orchid concocts a plan to get the doctor to come see them. Both Brave and Moon are shocked at how young Moon’s husband appears and are left speechless when he unknowingly calls them “grandmothers.” When the doctor is informed of his relation to these women, he is cold and tells her that he now has a new wife and a transformed life; one that she cannot be a part of. This unwanted meeting seriously impacts Moon Orchid’s mental health as she has a paranoid breakdown shortly after. She won’t talk on the phone for fear of Mexican ghosts tracking and killing her. Brave Orchid tries bringing her sister to move into her house, but her efforts are in vain and when she gets worse, Brave accepts her madness and takes her to a mental asylum, where she is very happy because “no one ever leaves.”It is here that Moon Orchid passes away.

In “ A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” Kingston writes about how Brave Orchid, her mother, cut her tongue as a child. Apparently, her mother told her that she cut her frenum to prevent her from becoming tongue-tied and allow her to pronounce anything. Kingston expresses her dissatisfaction with the outcome by giving an account of her childhood experiences. In describing her shyness in school, she tells us about another silent Chinese girl in her class, who she despises. This hatred is fueled in part because she identifies with this girl; through her, she understands what others may see her like, and this scares her. This anger escalates until one day when she is alone with the girl, she begins to scream at her, demanding that she talk. Her anger intensifies and she begins to grab her, squeeze her face, and pull her hair repeatedly, while the girl is silently sobbing. After the girl’s older sister comes to her rescue, Kingston is bedridden with a mysterious illness. This illness appears mental because when her mother commands her to get up and stop all this, she obeys. Kingston blames the ghosts and the “secrecy of the Chinese” for her silence. She describes the madness of various people in the community. Her parents, unsure of what to do with her, allows one of the crazies to come visit her and one day Kingston explodes; blaming her mom for her difficulties with speech and accusing her of deceiving and confusing her. Kingston ends with a story that begins as her mother’s story and then becomes her own, where a Chinese poet, similar to the narrator, had to learn to sing in a foreign tongue.

Reception

Since it's publication in 1976, The Woman Warrior has maintained a "vexed reception history that both attests to its popularity and questions it." Much of the debate concerns issues dealing with "autobiographical accuracy, cultural authenticity, and ethnic representativeness," while the critical center of the battle is whether or not Kingston offers a faitful representation of Chinese culture and of Chinese-Americans.

Reviewer Michael T. Malloy thought the book to have an exotic setting, but deemed it too mainstream American feminist, dealing with only the "Me and Mom" genre.

Generally, The Woman Warrior has been well-received by Kingston's American audience. However, her Chinese, or Asian audience has expressed some harsh criitique of her collection. Jeffery Paul Chan expresses displeasure that the collection was posed as non-fiction, a genre label that he believes to belittle Chinese-American experiences. He believes Kingston to have given a distorted view of Chinese-American culture; one that is based on her own experience. Chan is also upset at the mistranslation of the Cantonese term, "ghost" and Benjamin R. Tong, another of Kingston's critics, goes as far as to say that this mistranslation was done deliberately to "suit white tastes so that her book would sell better." Tong critiques Kingston by saying that she has the sensibility of Chinese-American history but no "organic connection" to it. He claims that she is only "catching pigs," or tricking whites by giving them what they think is Chinese, and selling out her own people.

One critic, Sheryl Mylan believes that Kingston constructs an Orientalist framework to separate herself from her mother and her culture, but in the process she replicates the ideologies of the US dominant culture. Another critic, Sau-ling Wong perceives Kingston's "Orientalist effect" to be the result of Kingston's failure to critique patriarchal values or institutional racism, resulting in misconceptions about Chinese culture and Chinese-Americans. Other critics, such as David Li, suggests that the collection functions as "a means of contesting power between the dominant culture and the ethnic community; whose value lies in foregrounding the representational issues that have accompanied growth of Asian American creative and critical production."

Among Kingston's most relentless critics is Frank Chin, who accuses Kingston of being "unChinese" and "a fake." He criticizes Kingston for giving her readers more Orientalist stereotypes, as well as criticizing her readers for accepting these stereotypes. Chin also accuses Kingston of "practising an inauthentic Orientalism inherited from the apologetic autobiographies written in the Chinese American 'high' tradition." In Kingston's defense, reviewer Deborah L. Madsen explains this accusation as Chin's tendency to privilege the low, working-class tradition of Chinese-American writing as "authentic," which is not Kingston's tradition. Madsen claims that autobiographical Chinese-American writing is full of competing discourses that differ both culturally and racially, and as Chinese-American writers seek both Chinese ethnicity and American citizenship, the result may be "a subversion of racial authenticity," which she believes to be the case with Kingston. Other reviewers, such as Jeehyun Lim believes that the criticism that accuses Kingston's representation of the Chinese-American community as barbaric, "misreads her play with ideas of foreignness and nativeness."