Immigrants In The Woman Warrior

Since the early days of the United States, immigration has been a recurring issue. In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston serves as an example of the experiences had by Chinese immigrants in the 20th century. She faced many hardships that people who have established themselves do not, such as terrible working condition, segregation, and alienation because of Americans’ false understandings of what Chinese immigrants are really like. Some argue that immigration is what has gotten the country to where it is today, while others say that the US would be better without them. Today, a major issue that has been brought to the forefront of the collective conscience of the American people is that of Mexican immigration thanks to the recent presidential

It may be hard to do this; new immigrants lack many of the prerequisites, and more importantly, they face discrimination in the workplace. This leaves them two options. The first is that they could attempt to receive aid from others. The other option, according to the Population Reference Bureau, is to take much less appealing jobs. Because of this, “The occupational fatality rate for Hispanics has been the highest among all groups in the United States for 15 years,” and foreign-born workers’ fatality rates have increased by eight percent from 1992 to 2005 (PRB). Safer jobs often come with a more probing interview and screening process that, for one reason or another, turn down immigrants at a much higher rate, even if they have may have more to give to the job specifically at hand. Even with a business’s best interests being in profit and production, they scrutinize based on status to hire “American.” A similar scenario can be seen in The Woman Warrior. Hong Kingston reveals that her family used to work at a laundromat, a more dangerous and undesirable job than it

After all, being rejected by society for something that cannot be changed can hit the core of one’s being. In a work published by the American Humor Studies Association, Sterling Eisiminger of Clemson University compiles ethnic slurs that different ethnicities have been called, and analyzes them to discover the underlying thought behind them. Mexicans have been thought of as, “anti-social, anti-intellectual, unable to postpone gratification, violent, passive, fatalistic, dirty, romantic, and untrustworthy,” (Eisiminger, 9-10) as well as other things of the sort. Chinese were seen in America as “inscrutable, materialistic, garrulous, cowardly” (Eisiminger, 11). This paints a clear picture of what they are seen as among the plenty of more intolerant people in the country. Of course, these, like all stereotypes, are either misleading or downright untrue. In fact, both Mexican and Chinese Americans strongly value family in general, which clashes directly with the accusations presented earlier (VOA News). Hong Kingston write about the talk-story that her mother tells her such as the tale of Fa Mu Lan that is meant to tell children-particularly women-that