Ghosts in The Women Warrior

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Envision yourself as encircled by strange, yet terrifying and evil spirits that trouble you in your worst nightmares. The spirits could desire something from you. In fact, they could aid you in locale of frightening you. Should you attend to them? What do you contemplate they are trying to notify you? In one of the inquiries above, notice the ironical use of the word “fact” that endeavors to obscure the fictitious nature of ghosts. It displays that the meaning of the word “ghost” is equivocal. In supplementary words, the word “ghost” is multivalued, that way that ghosts can purpose in extra than one way.

The word “ghost” originates from the Aged English word “gast,” and its synonyms are “soul, spirit [good or bad spirit], existence, breath,” and “demon” (etymonline.com). In the book, The Woman Warrior, that is, ironically, subtitled as Memoirs of a Girlhood Amid Ghosts, the author, Maxine Hong Kingston, uses the word “ghost” as a metaphor to typify her confusion concerning discovering a difference amid reality and unreality – the difference that divides her American present that prefers and her Chinese past that her mother, Valiant Orchid, filters into her mind across talk-stories that steadily daunt her to cross her established bounds. Ghosts, in the book, change reliant on point of view. Anybody whose deeds deviates from what is satisfactory in one area is a ghost according to the associates of that society. To Chinese people, like Valiant Orchid, Americans are ghosts. On the supplementary hand, Chinese are ghosts according to Chinese-Americans (including Kingston, who finds her past loaded alongside frightening Chinese ghosts). For Kingston, Ghosts, however, are not always scary; in fact, a little of them enthuse...

... middle of paper ...

...Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. Random House, Inc, 1976. Print

Bucci, Diane Todd. "Chinese Americans and the Borderland Experience on Golden Mountain: The Development of a Chinese American Identity in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts." Ethnic Studies Review 30.1/2 (2007): 1-11. Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. 12 Dec. 2011. .

Paman, Alex G. "Asian Ghost Stories." Yolk 31 Dec. 2000. Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. .

Rector, Monica. "Cross-Cultural Understanding: The American Ghost." Semioticon.com. Web. 15 Dec. 2011. .

Online Etymology Dictionary. Web. 15 Dec. 2011. .

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