Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior

In the book, Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghost by Maxine Hong Kingston, she refers to most people as ghost. She considered anyone who is not Chinese as a ghost. Kingston labels herself as a Chinese-American and she labels herself as a ghost too. This term is used throughout the entire book. In the chapter Shaman, it is used more than any other chapter. Kingston has her own meaning and interpretation of ghosts. Ghosts to her are living spirits, such as the people she calls ghost in this chapter. Ghost are people without identity in this story. This may be the most difficult story to define. It’s labeled as a non-fiction book because the stories are about events happening in Kingston’s life, but the memoirs are something different.

The memoirs of the ghost story she is telling her daughter has a meaning. Brave Orchid is trying to tell Kingston the mistakes she made when she lost her power and trying to prevent her from making the same mistakes as well. My point is to not just talk about Kingston’s ghost stories, but to explain what previously happen to Brave Orchid that changes Kingston’s mindset to be different about ghost. Brave Orchid has a big role of how Kingston views ghost.
Shaman talks about Maxine Hong Kingston’s mother. She goes to medical school shortly after her husband’s leaves for America. The mother is older than all of the students in her school so she is into the graduating class. After graduation Brave Orchid goes back to her village to become a doctor but migrates to America in 1940. She has daughters, hoping that America would teach them things that will catch them a husband. As Kingston grows up, Brave Orchid begins to tell her about all of her ghost stories. She mentions that they live in a ghost county. She also mentions that Americans are ghost because they have little tradition. On the other hand, the Chinese have tradition.
This chapter ties the situations of the real and the fantasy. This fantasy helps Brave Orchid escape her tough realities of her life to make an effort towards confronting her fears and the difficult uncertainties of her life. Kingston says that, “Not many women got to live out the daydream of women… to have a room, even a section of a room that only gets messed up when she messes it up herself” (60-61). This is what Kingston told Phyllis Thompson in an interview. Brave Orchid creates the sitting ghost. The sitting ghost is the unsatisfied want, apart from the human body, nourished by Brave Orchid’s deserted efforts to repel. The more she feeds it, it gives the sitting ghost more power over her. The sitting ghost develops during Brave Orchid’s extensive hunger walk to the mountains of white tigers. The walk was so lengthy Brave Orchid learns how to turn her hunger into visionary power. She tries to envision the experience like how Fa Mu Lan did, but she gets attacked. Brave Orchid states:
“She did not know whether she had fallen asleep or not when she heard a rushing coming out from under the bed. Cringes of fear seized her soles as something alive, rumbling, climbed the foot of the bed. It rolled over her and landed bodily on her chest. There it sat. It breathed airlessly, pressing her, sapping her. ‘Oh, No. A Sitting Ghost,’ she thought. She pushed against the creature to lever herself out from underneath it, but it absorbed this energy and got heavier. Her fingers and palms because damp, shrinking at the ghost’s thick short hair like an animal coat, which slides against warm solidity as human flesh slides against muscles and bones. She grabbed clutches of fur and pulled. She pinched the skin in the hair grew out of and gouged into it with her fingernails. The mass thickens” (Kingston, 68-69).
Brave Orchid knows this ghost cannot be defeated if she tries to fight it. The more she tries to fight it, the sitting ghost just gets bigger and stronger. She starts to describe to the medical school people how the ghost really is acts:
“It’s a good thing I stopped it feeding on me; blood and meat would have given it strength to feed on you.

I made my will and eggshell encasing the monster’s fur so that the hollow hairs could not draw. I never let up willing its size smaller, its hair to retract, until by dawn the Sitting Ghost temporarily disappeared…. The sitting ghost has many wide black mouths. It is dangerous. It is real. Most ghost make sure brief and gauzy appearances that eyewitnesses doubt their own sightings. This one conjure up enough substance to sit solidly throughout a night. It is a serious ghost, not at all playful… It does not bother with tricks. It wants lives”

(73-74).
Maxine Hong Kingston refers to ghosts in this novel numerous time. Ghosts are a part of the Chinese culture theory. The title Shaman has some meaning to it like the rest of the chapter names. A shaman is a person looked upon as having contact to or inspiration in the domain of good and evil spirits. This is common amongst peoples in the northern Asia area and North America area. Normally these type of people enter a daydream like state during a ritual, and exercise foretelling and healing. In the Chinese culture they believe in ghosts. There are some others who don't believe in them. The Chinese society regularly say, "If you believe it, there will be, but if you don't, there will not." (“Chinese Ghost Culture” 1) .Brave Orchid is obviously one of those who believe in them; she is a shaman. She practiced it where she from and where she migrated to in America. In the book, a garbage man strolls up to the window to find Kingston and her relatives are teasing the garbage man. Brave Orchid then quickly shuts the window to secure the house from this garbage ghost. Brave Orchid firmly believes that she is keeping the evil out and away from her.
A Shaman perceives illness as a lack of power because it may have been lost somewhere in your life. Brave Orchid lost her power when her husband left her for America. If you want your power returned to you, a shaman must heal. The individual must perform a power animal retrieval; this explains why Brave Orchid went to the mountains of white tigers. A power animal, like a white tiger, is a defender which protects you from harm and helps with spiritual growth by providing you its power. Brave Orchid needed that animal to get her power back. A shaman believes everything is alive and is a spirit; this relates to the garbage ghost, mailman ghost, meter reader ghost, etc. Orchid can only communicate with these spirits if she changes her perspectives. This change Brave Orchid tries to make will allow a part of her soul to leave her body. Once this happens a shaman can retrieve power or something she has lost along her life. This is the process Brave Orchid endured.
Paul Outka thinks Brave Orchid is trying to be like Fa Mu La as she walks to the mountains of white tigers.

Her mental strength is put to the test. The sitting ghost is a figment of Brave Orchids’ imagination, but it seems real to her in her head. Brave Orchid considers most people in America to be a ghost because they don’t have an identity. She calls it a hairy butt boulder, a fox spirit, the black thing, a dark creature. What do all of these things mean? A monster is what she’s describing. The ghost has no facial features or a shape. Brave Orchid can’t shake this ghost so she befriends it in a way. She mocks it and regains strength from the ghost. She threatens to turn the ghost into food. It’s obvious that she can’t fight this, but turning the ghost into food and eating it will make it go

away.
“We have a communal kitchen with human- sized jars of oil and cooking fat, enough to burn for a mouth without our skipping a single fried meal. I will pour alcohol into my wash bucket, and I’ll set fire to it. Ghost, I will burn you out. I will swing the bucket across the ceiling. Then from the kitchen my friends will come with lard; when we fire it, the smoke will fill every crack and corner …. You are a puny little boulder indeed. Yes, when I get my oil, I will fry you for breakfast” (Kingston, 70-71).
When Brave Orchid fear took over her, this is what she said to the ghost. After she said this the ghost disappeared temporarily. She was doing her meditation at her school. When she wakes up she tells the people around her wake her up the next time she’s goes into deep meditation. Orchid is fighting the sitting ghost and getting mental strength at the same time. She is trying to get the power she lost back. The sitting ghost rarely comes when you are practicing shamanism. During the walk to the mountains Brave Orchid couldn’t defeat what she was attacked by. There is where she went wrong.
Some may object that Kingston has her own interpretation of ghost, but in the Shaman chapter she goes into detail about what ghost are to her. Also, how they affect her. Kingston’s mother, Brave Orchid, tells her all of the ghost she has encountered. What Kingston really meant is ghost helped her mom escape the horrible realties she had to face. Ultimately, then, my goal was to demonstrate that Kingston did not just put ghost in the story to make it a mystery , but to show her meaning of what ghost are to her. This story is difficult to define because it’s Kingston’s has multiple symbols and those symbols each have different meaning which all ties in together.