Chinese American Literature by Women:

Maxine Hong Kingston, a second-generation Chinese American, is best known for her powerful autobiography, The Woman Warrior. In this non-fiction novel, she challenges the reader with the incorporation of Chinese folklore and supernatural phenomena (ghosts). At times she seems almost unaware that she is writing for an audience. Although some readers many think that Kingston should have elaborated in these areas, it is not her responsibility to do so as a writer. The critic or reader cannot criticize or fully understand all of the author's experiences because she/he has not "been there" or lived through it. "Autobiography is fiction, and fiction is autobiography. Factual truth is irrelevant to autobiography" says critic Robert Elbaz. Although many readers do like to read books that give some sort of revelation, this may be irrelevant to the author's intentions.

Kingston's novel can be seen as a search for an identity. Is she a figure of American culture or Chinese heritage? Was Kingston influenced by her mother's Chinese background and way of life or did she rebel and become fully Americanized? Although Kingston doesn't agree with many of the Chinese traditions, she is still accepting of her childhood and the stories her mother tells her because they become part of her identity. This can be seen by the fact that she includes and retells these stories in her autobiography. They have a great significance to her mother and herself as well as representing the paradox in which she lives. She is Chinese-American, Traditional-Modern, and Female-Feminist.

This is an exerpt from Amy Ling's chapter "Focus on America: Seeking a Self and a Place" in her text, Between Worlds: Women of Chinese Ancestry:

"In The Woman Warrior, not only does Maxine Hong Kingston use the first person freely, but she ranges widely through the polyglossia and images of her multicultural upbringing, from male locker room talk- 'I hope the man my aunt loved wan't just a tits and ass man' (9) to the allusions to Virginia Woolf- 'by giving women what they wanted: a job and a room of their own' (62) to Chinese myth- 'As the water shook, then settled, the colors and lights shimmered into a picture, not reflecting anything I could see around me. There at the bottom of the gourd were my mother and father scanning the sky, which was where I was' (22)- to open tirades against her mother: 'You lie with your stories. You won't tell me a story and then say, 'This is a true story,' or 'This is just a story.' I can't tell the difference. I don't even know what your real names are. I can't tell what's real and what you make up. Ha! You can't stop me from talking. You tried to cut off my tongue, but it didn't work' (202). This polyglossia is a verbal portrait of the Chinese American girl Maxine, who being young is still creating herself. Maxine is American-bold in protesting the misogyny of traditional Chinese culture and the tyrannical methods her mother used to impose her will on her family. Kingston is poetic and imaginative in creating dramas that she did not witness: the No Name aunt's adultry and punishment, Fa Mulan's mystical training, Brave orchid's exorcizing of the sitting ghost. In fact, the line between fantasy and reality, in Kingston's book as in her mother's stories, is never strictly maintained and the narrative frequently crosses the border."

The purpose of Kingston's novel is to come to terms with the past so that she can move on to the future by bringing together the two sides of her life, Chinese and American."

References:

Ling, Amy. 1990. Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry. New York, NY: Pergamon Press.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. 1976. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girhood Among Ghosts. New York, NY: Vintage/Random House.

Go to Homepage