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Maxine Hong Kingston creates a self as a Chinese-American woman through models of selfhood in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. She does this by writing stories and rewriting myths that identify parts of her self. The story of the? No Name Woman? shows Kingston? s fears of being forgotten and her feminist views.
The rewritten vision of Fa MuLan is a story that Kingston identifies with as a Chinese-American woman. She tells about her mother to show how they are the same in some ways. Kingston? s stories and myths have strong representations of her selfhood throughout the book. The three strongest examples of this are? No Name Woman? , Fa MuLan, and her mother.
The book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts has much controversy over it? s labeling of? nonfiction? . Some Chinese-American authors 1 oppose of this book being labeled non-fiction, because they say it is not historically correct.
They say it also ruins parts of Chinese-American culture and tradition. I would have to disagree and go with the other side of the argument 2. Kingston is trying to create herself through these stories by using Chinese stories to find meaning in this present day world. Despite the stress laid on attending to historical or textual materials, Kingston? s goal is not to disseminate tradition in its?
original? form but rather to keep cultural myths alive by drawing their relevance to the present (Woo, 185). She also uses the cultural stories to bring a more modern day meaning to them. But when she is puzzled about the meaning of her own life, she looks to them for guidance. Kingston seems to be trying to do in most of her stories is? to identify those parts of the traditional culture which as she interprets them at least, promise to give her the most?
ancestral help? in coping with the confusions and contradictions of her own everyday existence (Cook, 48). What makes this book seem like an autobiography, the most, is its fiction. Kingston makes this statement herself?
I couldn? t tell where the stories left off and the dreams began? (Kingston, 19). She herself could not decipher the fiction and non-fiction in her life. This makes the fiction in her book, The Woman Warrior, the most representative of her selfhood. Her identity as a Chinese-American woman is portrayed best in these stories.
Yet the truth of her life is more clearly represented through the fictions she tells since she lives in a world where her own reality is bound up with half-truths and fiction (Nishime, 72). So in order to find the self-hood of Kingston we have to look at the fictions in her book. The book opens with the story of the? No Name Woman? . This is the story of Kingston? s supposed Aunt who becomes pregnant by someone other than her husband.
The villagers then attack her and her family. After the birth of her daughter, she kills herself and the baby. Kingston? s mother tells her this story to warn her about pre-marital sex.
Kingston then retells the story for other reasons. Kingston first reveals herself as an independent adult from her parents in the story of the? No Name Woman? . Her mother had told her? Don? t tell anyone you had an aunt? (Kingston 15).
By retelling the story in the book, she has directly gone against her mother? s wishes. Kingston? s revelation of the story of the No Name Woman serves as her memoirs?
first act of self-empowerment through writing and a rejection of village morality. As such, demarcates the nexus of alliances and sexuality within the family (Quinby, 134). She not only creates herself as an independent adult but also shows that she discards some of her parent? s teachings and views towards women in particular. The second purpose behind this story is to create the fears of Kingston? s own selfhood.
She points out that? the real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family? s deliberately forgetting her? (Kingston, 16). She makes it very clear to the reader that the punishment of the family of forgetting the Aunt Is more severe than the punishment of the villagers attack. The secret story of Maxine? s aunt, an adulteress and a suicide, gives voice to Maxine?
s darkest fears, fears that she will be forgotten, that she will not be fed by her family (Outka, 4). Throughout her life, her family bombards her with the sexist ideals of women. As I have stated, she tells this story as a rejection of her parent? s wishes.
She is also afraid that her parents are going to forget her because of her rejection of them and their sexist ideals. Kingston truly creates a model of selfhood when she retells the story of Fa MuLan. She creates herself as a modern Chinese-American feminist. She re writes Fa MuLan in such a way that Fa MuLan speaks with her voice, and she can identify and recognize herself in the stories of Chines-America and claim a Chinese-American identity (Nishime, 75). This would not be possible had she left the story of Fa MuLan as it originally was. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing with Chinese mythology.
She changes it to incorporate it into her own life. Kingston does not simply question traditional mythology of China but also incorporates it into her writing. Thus she revives part, the useful part, of the mythology instead of repressing it. Kingston appropriates Fa MuLan by configuring it into a new cultural context. Thus it emerges as a paradox: she uses the power of Chinese mythology to reinforce her American identity, there by transcending the customary ways of defining the self and defying the village mentality of Chinatown (Yuan, 300). The first way she alters the story of Fa MuLan to create a model of selfhood.
She changes the story by combining it with that of another Chinese myth. Where she tells about the carving of names on Fa MuLan? s back that is really from another myth about a Chinese male. The swords woman and I are not dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them.
What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are? report a crime? and?
report to five families. ? The reporting is the vengeance-not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. And I have so many words-? Chink? words and?
gook? words too- that they do not fit on my skin (Kingston 53). She is saying that her? sword?
is actually the pen she is using to write this book. She is writing to avenge for crimes people have committed against her. Kingston links writing with violence under the rubric of revenge? writing her book and reporting the symbolic violence she has suffered is a revenge similar to Fa MuLan?
s military exploits? oppression in Kingston? s text is represented as a symbolic violence to which the writing of the text is a response (Danahay, 72 - 73). She is telling everyone who reads her book about the crimes she needs to avenge. Kingston also admits that there are so many crimes against her that they don?
t all fit on her back. This means she can? t even avenge them all. The story of Fa MuLan would not have been a model of selfhood had she not combined it with the other myth. The myth shows the true physical existence of what Kingston? s life and beliefs are all about.
If she hadn? t altered the myth this would not be true To make the choice is to lose the chance for a full identity. If they are to help Maxine build the resilient identity she so desperately needs, myths like the Fa MuLan story must not simply offer an escape from her immediate practical concerns. They must have both a realistic physical and an imaginative component; they must mirror Maxine? s own quest for viable selfhood (Outka, 9). She would not have been able to portray her beliefs as a Chinese-American woman from the original Fa MuLan.
So the altering of the story makes it a model of selfhood. Kingston finds this security in language and the and the ability to create a coherent reality, even if it is a contrived, fictitious one? For this reason she sees no problem with personalizing and embellishing upon the myth of Fa MuLan, whose life she would like to see? branching?
into her own (Woo, 187). In the story of Fa MuLan she alters the part where Fa MuLan kills the baron. Kingston does this to portray her feminist views. The proud display of Fa MuLan? s breast before she kills the baron is to show the power and beauty of women. She connects with Fa MuLan in that part of her book.
The fat baron-as mythic exemplar of Chinese patriarchy-quotes the sayings that, for a moment, unite Fa MuLan and Maxine in their common hatred, convicting himself and setting the stage for Fa MuLan? s triumphant revelation of her female identity and subsequent execution of the baron for his crimes (Outka, 8). The connection between Fa MuLan and Maxine truly makes the story a model of selfhood. The biggest problem Kingston has had to face is trying to represent her Chinese-American self and her feminist self. This is hard to do because feminism contradicts the Chinese culture. The Chinese culture that she has to battle is the views of women.
Then- heaven help him- he tried to be charming, , to appeal to me man to man. Oh, come now. Everyone takes the girls when he can. The families are glad to be rid of them. ? Girls are maggots in the rice. ? ? It is more profitable to raise geese than daughters? (Kingston, 43).
That is another reason for her re-writing of the story of Fa MuLan. She could not do both with the original version of the story. Only through a fantastic rewriting of the myth of Fa MuLan can the protagonist reconcile the opposition between feminism and nationalism. By rewriting the fable, she creates a Chinese myth that allows her to subvert gender roles and still be a national hero. Through Chinese myths she begins to realize a Chinese-American identity? (Nishime, 80). She needed to revise it so it shows both her Chinese-American culture and her feminist views.
Throughout the story of Fa MuLan, MuLan identifies with Chinese males. This gives Kingston the chance to ascertain the identity with Chinese males. This gives her a very strong opinion against the traditional Chinese views of women. Kingston for instance, has tried through her work to mediate between affirming her ethnic heritage and undermining patriarchy. But feels that identification with Asian men at times inhabits an equally strong feminist impulse (Cheung 126).
By doing this she creates herself as a feminist. In the book, The Woman Warrior, Kinston creates two heterogeneous characters of women the No Name Woman and Fa MuLan. The No Name Woman is a very quiescent character without any say or control over what happens to her. Fa MuLan is a very strong and victorious woman. Kingston has captured contradictory images of women that are presented within traditional Chinese culture. The image of the passive, dependent, and servile women is a juxtaposed against that of independent, self-sufficient female (Woo, 178).
What she is trying to do is change the? world? in a way. She is trying to redirect women? s anger of crimes committed against them to a more proactive movement. She is creating herself again as a feminist in this way.
Both No Name Aunt and Fa MuLan are outside the communal authority struggle with desire, but while the Aunt? s struggle is tragically unsuccessful- she ends up killing herself, internalizing the villagers? judgment- Fa MuLan represents Maxine? s dream of externalizing that violence, redirecting it from the (female) self to the patriarchy (Outka, 6). This is what she wants to do with herself. She doesn?
t want to not do anything with the mistreatment that has been afflicted on her. She wants to take that anger and use it for revenge. She does this by taking her pen (her? sward? ) and writing a book about it. A book that creates revenge by identifying herself as a strong?
women warrior? . Kingston tells the story of her mother? s life in China. Her tale of how she became a doctor, battled ghosts, traveled long distances to cure the sick and deliver babies. She links herself to her mother in these stories. My mother may have been afraid, but she would be a dragons (?
my totem, your totem). She could make herself not weak. During danger she fanned out her dragon claws and riffled her red sequin scales and unfolded her coiling green strips. Danger was a good time for showing off. Like the dragons living in temple eaves, my mother looked down on plain people who were lonely and afraid (Kingston, 67). A weight lifted from me?
The word is somehow lighter. She has not called me that endearment for years- a name to fool the gods. I am really a Dragon, as she is a Dragon, both of us born in dragon years (Kingston, 108 - 109). Here Kingston has linked herself to her mother.
Making her mothers stories her own. The defining of her mother? s selfhood then becomes Kingston? s model of self. In these ways, the memoirs show how through writing one can symbolically revisit one?
s mother, not as a child but as an adult who gives birth to herself as artist with the aid of her mother? s midwifery (Quinby, 139). So we can see not only is she looking back on her mother? s stories. She is creating herself as an adult. Myths and symbols are used to create the author?
s selfhood throughout the book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston. These models of selfhood can be seen in the story of the? No Name Women? , which models Kingston? s views and fears.
Kingston has altered the story of Fa MuLan so it could become a model of her selfhood. Kingston also links herself to her Mother so, that the story of her Mother has become her own. The story of the? No Name Women? , Fa MuLan, and her Mother do truly make the book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts a model of Maxine Hong Kingston? s selfhood. Notes 1.
I am referring to Frank Chin? s article Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and Fake, in The Big Aiiieeee! Ed. Jefferey Paul Chan, et al. New York: Penguin, 1991. 1 - 92 2. I am referring to all the articles on my work cited list Bibliography Cheung, King-Kok. ?
The Woman Warrior versus the Chinaman Pacific: Must a Chinese American Critic Choose between Feminism and Heroism? ? Maxine Hong Kingston? s The Woman Warrior: A Casebook. Ed. Sau-Ling Wong. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 113 - 133 Cook, Rufus. ?
Maintaining the Past: Cultural Continuity in Maxine Hong Kingston? s Work. ? Taking Review: A Quarterly of Comparative Studies between Chinese and Foreign Literatures. 25: 1 (Fall 1994): 35 - 58 Danahay, Martin A. ? Breaking the Silence: Symbolic Violence and the Teaching of Contemporary?
Ethnic? Autobiography. ? College Literature. 18: 3 (Oct, 1991): 64 - 79 Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of Girlhood Among Ghosts. New York: Vintage International, 1989. Nishime, Lei Lana. ?
Engendering Genre: Gender and Nationalism in China Men and The Woman Warrior. ? MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic-Literature of the United States. 20: 1 (Spring 1995): 67 - 82 Outka, Paul. ? Publish or Perish: Food, Hunger, and Self-Construction in Maxine Hong Kingston? s The Woman Warrior. ?
Contemporary Literature. 38: 3 (Fall 1997): 447 - 82 Quinby, Lee. ? The Subject of Memoirs: The Woman Warrior? s Technology of Ideographic Selfhood. ? Critical Essays on Maxine Hong Kingston.
Ed. Laura E. Skandera-Trouble. New York: G.
K. Hall &# 038; Co. , 1998. 125 - 145 Woo, Deborah. ? Maxine Hong Kingston: The Ethnic Writer and the Burden of Dual Authenticity. ? Amer asia Journal. 16: 1 (1991): 173 - 200 Yuan, Yuan. ? The Semiotics of China Narratives in the Con/Texts of Kingston and Tan. ? Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. 40: 3 (Spring 1999): 292 - 303
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