Maxine Hong Kingston's The Women Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston's The Women Warrior explores the tension of individual and collected identity through storytelling. In the three short stories, "No Name Woman," "White Tiger," and "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe," Kingston uses narratives as her main strategy to question the traditional Chinese community that remains undisrupted, and that continues to oppress women. In analyzing the autobiography, Kingston uses silence to show the oppression, while the storytelling serves as a form to find her own voice. Each of the stories refer to women who Kingston has identified with- women without a voice, they serve as a reminder of hope and what she could become. She integrates oral storytelling told by her mother to indicate the unresolved experiences, and to add her own interpretation of them. In a way, her mother serves as the guide for Kingston who wants to find her own voice and break the barriers of oppression. The autobiography is about the

storytelling that is there to challenge traditional gender ideologies that keeps women oppressed. However, it is also a constant reminder how women can transcend socially imposed limitations by giving them an alternative ending in which they are able to find their voices in an otherwise patriarchal culture.
Traditional gender ideologies has been a problem for years, but each generation has been fighting to break them, and reestablish a new set of rules that will benefit women. Women no longer stay quiet, and much like Kingston, they fight back when confronted about their gender. The progress from the silence is evident as at "night I sang to them glorious songs that came out of the sky and into my head. When I opened my mouth, the songs poured out and were loud enough for the whole encampment to hear" (Kingston 37). Women are being loud, Kingston is being loud to be heard in the tempest that holds her community oppressed and undisrupted. The songs are the words that are spoken to heal the ghosts of the past. They hold the untold stories, and the sadness that was shed from the suffrage. However, words are capable of destroying as they also rewrite a new future. Oral storytelling is able to change people's minds because words contain the power to make a difference.
Storytelling is a process in which the listener is given an opportunity to understand, and make their own interpretation. Kingston's silence is ironic because she finds herself telling stories, and without knowing, these stories are helping her find her own voice. "No Name Woman," begins with the statement to do the opposite of what it is being told. In fact, throughout the autobiography Kingston's mother reminds her that she "must not tell anyone…what I am about to tell you" (3). These words signify the beginning of a rebellion, and the path to make a change. Kingston is being challenged about her beliefs to see what she is going to do, and how she is going to use the stories. Oral storytelling has the power of strengthening women and giving them self-worth to determine the fate of the ghosts, and the future of the new generation.
The autobiography brings awareness through every story about the backlash that girls receive when they become outspoken.

There is a voice in everyone, but sometimes it is buried deeply inside. They have to fight their way to be able to find it, and that is what Kingston does. Her story is true, and heartfelt as she is aware of what she is bringing to herself. However, that is what everyone needs to do even if young girls are afraid of the backlash that they can receive from their families, they still need to continue to fight for change. Linda Morante confirms the "warning of a child frightened by a desolate expanse of widening silence" that she no longer wants to participate in (78). There is a widening silence in the Chinese community, and most of the time, they are unwilling to change that. However, while women have grown to become used to that silence, Kingston has not. She no longer wants to participate in a culture that forces women into oppression, and brings the stories forward to break through the

silence.
Outspoken women are powerful, they have the ability to represent themselves and be independent in their beliefs. While Kingston blames her mother for her silence, her mother is only looking out for her. If anything, Kingston's mother has been a rebel for a long time, and the ways she has done it is by telling the stories, making everyone aware that they are there. She cuts her daughter's tongue not to silence her, "I cut it to make you talk more, not less, you dummy" (Kingston 202). Daughters are not able to see the good in their parent's actions, and often mistake their good they do for evilness. However, a way to get through them is by telling oral stories that will make an impact in their development. According to Jill M. Parrott, in addressing the stories, Kingston is able to gain power by manipulating the silence, which gives her "the opportunity to create a masterful form that accentuates those pregnant silences, [turning] the expected obedience of her culture and family into a rhetorically powerful strategy, simultaneously embracing, rejecting, and manipulating it by translating it into her own version of the story" (386). Sometimes being disobedient leads to a great outcome as it does for Kingston, who by not following her culture as she was demanded to do so is able to write her own stories. By rejecting a part of her culture, she is able to express her feelings towards her family community. Women are meant to be leaders, they are not meant to follow a patriarchal culture. Breaking the rules, while is not always beneficial in this case it is for Kingston as she becomes a young independent woman who is able to be challenged and challenge others.
Silence has been affecting women for a long period of time, and it has been almost impossible to break free from it. An entire race has been under the oppression of patriarchy, rules by a belief of silence. Even these Chinese families that migrated to the United States have not been able to leave their silence behind. However, the way in how Kingston manages to break these boundaries is by being bullied by her own mother, who confronts her and tells her to speak up. Kingston states that her mother tells her that if "you don't talk, you can't have a personality… you have got to let people know you have a personality and a brain" (180). A rebel herself, she encourages her daughter to also become one. Women have come to terms that it is no longer acceptable to be told that they are the weaker sex. Sometimes the only thing a parent can do to rescue her child from staying in the silence is bullying them, and making them fight back with words that ultimately break the silence.
There is no greater power than words and acknowledging them, for what they can do is beyond anyone's capacity. While it takes time to admit that sometimes mothers play an important part in the development of someone's life, they are often that ones who can bring peace to an unrestful mind. Mothers open a new world for their daughters, they plant the seed for curiosity and water it. While Kingston is not able to see that, she does appreciate the stories told by her mother. Her mother test her strength in order to make her powerful enough to face anything in her life. While in the process of oral storytelling, Kingston's mother teaches the art of words, and makes of everyone a rebel in their own rights. Through the stories, Kingston realizes that she is also a storyteller, stating that "here is a story my mother told me… when I told her I also am a story-talker. The beginning is hers, the ending, mine" (206). The ending is hers because she has been capable of rewriting the stories in a way that have confronted society. She is telling everyone, including the reader that she has found a way to confront the ideologies that surround her culture. Sometimes people win battles not by fighting, but by telling the stories that can change someone's heart or mind.
Tested strength comes at a high price, but at the end the satisfaction of accomplishment makes it all worth it. Kingston accepts her dual culture, but does not agree with it. According to Morante, unlike the shy adolescent that Kingston used to be, she now "shouts out against prejudice and stereotyping. She protests loudly (and not too much) the sexist Chinese axioms that hammered upon her sense of self-worth" through the storytelling (81). That is the kind of young woman that her culture needs, someone that wants to make a different and protests the injustice against women. Kingston is strong, and able to see how silence has affected her community. She is not going to give up, and leaves her heart in the stories she is rewriting. Confronting the limitations that the women have in the stories is one way of protesting the sexist Chinese community.
Storytellers carry a burden with them that persist until the stories are told and have found their way into the world. Each and every individual that listens to the stories is meant to have their own interpretation, enriching them and giving voice to their beliefs. No one but the listener can interfere with the stories as it is important to understand the process of them and the self-creation that follows. While Kingston struggles with her own culture due to the stories she has been told, and her experiences with them, she states that "those in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants build around our childhood fit in solid America" (Kingston 5). While the young children have had to figure out that they too have been affected by invisibility, they have managed better than the adults. Kingston has used the oppression of the stories to find her own identity, and to see where she belongs.
Power comes from the challenges that are given; to conquer and rebel in them gives the beauty of new found perspectives. "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe" represents all the fears of the Chinese culture as a whole because women have been able to break free from the silence by letting their voices be heard. It validates the stories that have been hidden, telling about the impact they have had on everyone. The enormity of the stories is how they are told, how the mother prepares her child to face the world, even if Kingston does not agree with the way she was brought up. The irony of the autobiography is not lost, as Kingston continues to believe that her mother meant her harm. The importance to understand why the Chinese fear a "ready tongue an evil" is because they believe it to be a threat to their undisrupted culture (164). A ready tongue is capable and able to do anything, to bring the whole community down and fight for the atrocities that they have done. It confronts the patriarchy that has defeated women from previous generations. However, that is why stories are meaningful, because they say what someone could not.
The stories that are told often help shape who the listener will become, and they can either give confidence or insecurity. Throughout the autobiography, Kingston is given both, which becomes beneficial for her since that is how she decides to become a woman warrior and find her voice. Kingston states that while she has never realized the power that the stories are giving her, "at last I saw that I too had been in the presence of great power; my mother talking story" (Kingston 20). All along she has had the power to change the world, but she needed the confidence of a warrior to fight for it. Self-discovery is the most important part of change, not only physically but mentally. "White Tigers" gives the power of speech and selfhood. The culture starts to change as the stories transition, showing a more definite shift from oppression. It is through the celebration of feminism that Kingston starts to feel confident and combine her stories with those told by her mother.