The Woman Warrior Sparknotes

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The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts records Kingston’s struggle for self- expression. It is journey of a mute school girl who smeared paper with opaque black paint, the incommunicative adolescent who could not voice her sorrow to her mother, the inarticulate young adult who could only peep in protest to her racist employers eventually she becomes the adult artist who “talk story” in a “high and clear” voice. From the very beginning she was told to be silent especially in case of her aunt. As her mother instructs her: “you must not tell anyone…what I am about to tell you.” In addition she describes the silences of the individuals in her family, such as No Name Woman, her aunt Moon Orchid, the silence of her own childhood and …show more content…

Her parents were Chinese immigrants who came to the United States in search of a better life even in the United States life was very hard for them. Moreover, they had to do a lot of menial work in order to survive. Like other immigrant children, Kingston, too had to work in the family business. Her early life was surrounded by Chinese immigrants and her early years of education were better described as silent years as it was very difficult for a Chinese speaker to adjust in American school system i.e. in an English speaking world. All such confusion she describes in her …show more content…

She remains silent and keeps on waiting for her husband in China, who has remarried in America and settled in a new family. When she meets him after the period of long thirty years he greets her with cold interrogations: “What are you doing here?” and “Why you are here?”, and questions her intention: “What do you want?” Facing this situation she does not continue to accuse her husband and claim her right as a wife. It is her weakness that ruins her. She dare not say a word to a man who has made her widow and eventually insane. She has no strength to defend herself, no power to fight back, and no courage to claim the rights belonging to her. Obviously, Silence here implies the oppression and suffering of Chinese women as victims over a long period in a male-dominated

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