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Sample critical essays on woman warrior
Sample critical essays on woman warrior
The woman warrior analysis essay
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A Mother-Daughter Relationship in The Woman Warrior “Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life. Kingston’s mother takes many different approaches to reach out to her daughter and explain how important it is to remain abstinent. First, she tells the story of the “No Name Woman”, who is Maxine’s forgotten aunt, “’ Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her can happen to you. Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born”’ (5), said Maxine’s mother. Kingston’s aunt was murdered for being involved in this situation. The shame of what Kingston’s aunt brought to the family led them to forget about her. This particular talk-story is a cautionary tale to deter Kingston from having premarital sex and to instill in her fear of death and humiliation if she violates the lesson her mother explained to her. Kingston is able to get pregnant but with the lecture her mother advises her with keeps her obedient. Brave Orchid tells her this story to open her eyes to the ways of Chinese culture. The entire family is affected by one’s actions. She says, “‘Don’t humiliate us’” (5) because the whole village knew about the pregnant aunt and ravaged the family’s land and home because of it. Maxine tries asking her mother in-depth questions about this situation, but her m... ... middle of paper ... ...thoughts about them in this book. Kingston scolds her mother for eating pills that were lying around the house: “You shouldn’t take pills that aren’t prescribed for you. “’Don’t eat pills you find on the curb, you always told us.”’(100). It is now time for an ironic reversal of roles as Maxine advising her aging mother. At the end of “Shaman” mother and daughter gain a better understanding of each other. Brave Orchid accepted the fact that her daughter visited her only once a year because she needed her distance. Brave Orchid turned off the lights to let her daughter sleep and said, “‘You must go, Little Dog’”(108). This obviously touched Kingston emotionally. The more mature Kingston now realizes that her mother loves her, although she never really says it. “The world is somehow lighter. She has not called me that endearment for years-a name to fool the gods”(109).
No matter what actions or words a mother chooses, to a child his or her mother is on the highest pedestal. A mother is very important to a child because of the nourishing and love the child receives from his or her mother but not every child experiences the mother’s love or even having a mother. Bragg’s mother was something out of the ordinary because of all that she did for her children growing up, but no one is perfect in this world. Bragg’s mother’s flaw was always taking back her drunken husband and thinking that he could have changed since the last time he...
Since people who have different identities view the American Dream in a variety of perspectives, individuals need to find identities in order to have a deep understanding of obstacles they will face and voices they want. In The Woman Warrior, Maxing Hong Kingston, a Chinese American, struggles to find her identity which both the traditional Chinese culture and the American culture have effects on. However, in The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros clearly identifies herself as a Hispanic woman, and pivots to move up economically and socially to speak for her race. Even though both Kingston and Cisneros look for meanings of their identities, they have different approaches of reaching the full understanding.
Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club describes the lives of first and second generation Chinese families, particularly mothers and daughters. Surprisingly The Joy Luck Club and, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts are very similar. They both talk of mothers and daughters in these books and try to find themselves culturally. Among the barriers that must be overcome are those of language, beliefs and customs.
Chinese-Americans authors Amy Tan and Gish Jen have both grappled with the idea of mixed identity in America. For them, a generational problem develops over time, and cultural displacement occurs as family lines expand. While this is not the problem in and of itself, indeed, it is natural for current culture to gain foothold over distant culture, it serves as the backdrop for the disorientation that occurs between generations. In their novels, Tan and Jen pinpoint the cause of this unbalance in the active dismissal of Chinese mothers by their Chinese-American children.
Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.
Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture. As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.
“With time and maturity, Tan says, she gained a sense of pride in her heritage and formed a connection with her mother” (“The Joy Luck Club” 235). Like their author, the daughters in The Joy Luck Club experience a transformation in attitude towards their mothers and China over the course of the story, but the essential theme is more universal than that. Through the relationships of Chinese-born mothers and their American-born daughters, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club speaks to not only generational and cultural struggles within immigrant families but the struggle of all people to discover a unique identity.
Although she got pregnant by someone other than her husband they did not look at the good and joyful moments the child could bring. Having a baby can be stressful, especially being that the village was not doing so great. The baby could have brought guilt, anger, depression, and loneliness to the aunt, family, and village lifestyle because having a baby from someone other than your husband was a disgrace to the village, based on the orientalism of women. Society expected the women to do certain things in the village and to behave a particular way. The author suggests that if her aunt got raped and the rapist was not different from her husband by exploiting "The other man was not, after all, much different from her husband. They both gave orders; she followed. ‘If you tell your family, I 'll beat you. I 'll kill you. Be, here again, next week." In her first version of the story, she says her aunt was a rape victim because "women in the old China did not choose with who they had sex with." She vilifies not only the rapist but all the village men because, she asserts, they victimized women as a rule. The Chinese culture erred the aunt because of her keeping silent, but her fear had to constant and inescapable. This made matters worse because the village was very small and the rapist could have been someone who the aunt dealt with on a daily basis. Maxine suggests that "he may have been a vendor
In Chapter 3 of Woman Warrior, Kingston portrays “ghosts” as people who she does not quite associate herself with directly. She argues, “America has been full of machines and ghosts” (96), and then goes on to classify the many different types of these “ghosts”. Thus, at this point in the book, ghosts appear to be actual people. There are “Taxi Ghosts, Bus Ghosts, Police Ghosts, Fire Ghosts, Meter Reader Ghosts, Tree Trimming Ghosts, Five-and-Dime Ghosts” (97). These titles act as ways to classify the Americans around her. These people are ghosts because they represent a culture she does not feel completely connected to as a Chinese-American girl. The characters in the story actually identified as people all seem to be the narrator’s family who are Chinese. This becomes more clear when Kingston goes on to write,
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston displays the battle Kingston faces between Chinese and American cultures. Growing up in San Francisco to a family of Chinese immigrants, Kingston wants to break free from the standards imposed on her by her family. Surrounded by stereotypes and expectations, Kingston finds it difficult to accept both her Chinese and American cultures, but does. Like Kingston, I am born to a family of immigrants who hold their own beliefs and I have to balance between both my household culture and American culture.
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston portrays the complicated relationship between her and her mother, while growing up as a Chinese female in an American environment. She was surrounded by expectations and ideals about the inferior role that her culture imposed on women. In an ongoing battle with herself and her heritage, Kingston struggles to escape limitations on women that Chinese culture set. However, she eventually learns to accept both cultures as part of who she is. I was able to related to her as a Chinese female born and raised in America. I have faced the stereotypes and expectations that she had encountered my whole life and I too, have learned to accept both my Chinese and American culture.
Kingston uses the story of her aunt to show the gender roles in China. Women had to take and respect gender roles that they were given. Women roles they had to follow were getting married, obey men, be a mother, and provide food. Women had to get married. Kingston states, “When the family found a young man in the next village to be her husband…she would be the first wife, an advantage secure now” (623). This quote shows how women had to get married, which is a role women in China had to follow. Moreover, marriage is a very important step in women lives. The marriage of a couple in the village where Kingston’s aunt lived was very important because any thing an individual would do would affect the village and create social disorder. Men dominated women physically and mentally. In paragraph eighteen, “they both gav...
The patriarchal repression of Chinese women is illustrated by Kingston's story of No Name Woman, whose adulterous pregnancy is punished when the villagers raid the family home. Cast out by her humiliated family, she births the baby and then drowns herself and her child. Her family exile her from memory by acting as if "she had never been born" (3) -- indeed, when the narrator's mother tells the story, she prefaces it with a strict injunction to secrecy so as not to upset the narrator's father, who "denies her" (3). By denying No Name Woman a name and place in history, leaving her "forever hungry," (16) the patriarchy exerts the ultimate repression in its attempt to banish the transgressor from history. Yet her ghost continues to exist in a liminal space, remaining on the fringes of memory as a cautionary tale passed down by women, but is denied full existence by the men who "do not want to hear her name" (15).
“Walking erect (knees straight, toes pointed forward, not pigeon-toed, which is Chinese-feminine) and speaking in an inaudible voice, I have tried to turn myself American-feminine,” (11) recounts Maxine, the protagonist of Woman Warrior, a memoir written by author Maxine Hong Kingston. Stuck between two worlds, “Chinese-feminine” girls such as Maxine must sacrifice their chinese heritage in order to become “American feminine,” which withholds Chinese values. Placed in a world that stresses the importance of self-expression and individuality when discovering one’s purpose, Kingston presents the struggle of finding selfhood that Maxine faces as she encounters colliding cultures and varying
Many points of view come from people who share powerful stories with hidden messages, which change other people’s lives. Maxine Hong Kingston’s book, “The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts,” is about the stories she had grown up hearing throughout childhood, mainly of women who have had a significant role in her life. She writes about the memories, fantasies, and speculation of women’s lives who have impacted hers. The power of this book comes from the ‘talk-story’ or stories such as Fa Mu Lan, and Ts’ai Yen told by her family, because these bring her the strength on her path of finding her identity and gaining a better understand of her own place in the world. Also, Kingston shares language with women so that they can discover