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The woman warrior analysis essay
Essay on women warrior
The woman warrior by maxine hong kingston analysis
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Maxine Hong Kingston constructs her narrative, The Woman Warrior, around the central theme of silence, while simultaneously stripping it of the oppressive power it held over generations of woman in her family. Kingston’s use of talk story by means of direct discourse and first person account contribute to the dismantling of this silence by printing the unspoken, thus causing a shift in power to the silenced through voice and
representation
For Kingston, The Woman Warrior signifies more than five chapters of talk-stories synthesized together. Within each chapter of the memoirs, Kingston engraves the method in which she undertook to discover her discrete voice. The culture clash between her mother and Kingston accumulated her struggles and insecurities, resulting in Kingston’s climax during her tirade. However, what Kingston accentuates the most is that the a breakthrough from silence requires one to reject a society’s
Within Megan H. Mackenzie’s essay, “Let Women Fight” she points out many facts about women serving in the U.S. military. She emphasizes the three central arguments that people have brought up about women fighting in the military. The arguments she states are that women cannot meet the physical requirements necessary to fight, they simply don’t belong in combat, and that their inclusion in fighting units would disrupt those units’ cohesion and battle readiness. The 1948 Women’s Armed Services Integration Act built a permanent corps of women in all the military departments, which was a big step forward at that time. Although there were many restrictions that were put on women, an increase of women in the U.S. armed forces happened during
In MK Asante’s Buck, you’ll notice many life related issues, such as the main character, Malo getting into problems and having many issues with his family. People who struggled and been through many challenges in life, will understand every issue the characters experienced. I’ve felt like I didn’t have a voice once in my life, which was when I faced one of my biggest fears, that I thought I would never get over. Losing my mother was one of the hardest experiences I’ve ever had to face, felt like my identity was stripped from me. The purpose of this essay is to examine the theme of “voiceless” in the MK Asante’s Memoir, Buck, through a post colonialism theoretical framework in regards to Malo, his mother, and Uzi.
Today, society has become a boisterous world of communication. From telephone conversations to live Internet chat and e-mail, the world has never before been quite so in touch. In the novel Obasan, by Joy Kogawa, Naomi Nakane does not have technology to communicate. Instead, she faces the dilemma of communicating at all. From her family, Naomi is shown the many faceted truths of speech and communication. From strong, silent Obasan, to stubborn, resolute Aunt Emily, Naomi finds that one can correspond with others through silence as well as through speech. As a child, Naomi spends much of her life in non-communicative silence, only to help further the distance between herself and her mother. As Naomi grows into womanhood and beyond, she discovers that in speech lays understanding and, unfortunately, pain and sorrow. Joy Kogawa’s tale of Naomi Nakane shows how one young girl can live a tortured life and find peace living life in between silence speech.
Imagination is a quality that everyone has, but only some are capable of using. Maxine Hong Kingston wrote “No Name Woman” using a great deal of her imagination. She uses this imagination to give a story to a person whose name has been forgotten. A person whose entire life was erased from the family’s history. Her story was not written to amuse or entertain, but rather to share her aunts’ story, a story that no one else would ever share. The use of imagination in Kingston’s creative nonfiction is the foundation of the story. It fills the gaps of reality while creating a perfect path to show respect to Kingston’s aunt, and simultaneously explains her disagreement with the women in her culture.
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.
Silence in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, is used as a response to mistreatment, prejudice, racism and other immoral actions between people. In a hostile environment, Naomi, along with all the other Japanese Canadians, choose to employ this silence as a response to racism. Allow this mistreatment to continue, the acts committed against them could only grow with time, as well as a culture of hatred towards them.
Yet, silence as portrayed by Naomi in Joy Kogawa’s novel, Obasan only represses hurt that must be addressed. Japanese-Canadian movement groups realized these facts, and through their work success and reparations were attained. Kogawa represents the work of these groups by Aunt Emily - a woman destined to bring justice for Japanese Canadians. Her plea for justice is made possible through the transformation of Naomi’s thoughts toward her past. Like many Japanese Canadians did, Naomi tries to remain quiet about the reality she experienced.
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...
In the story, the narrator is forced to tell her story through a secret correspondence with the reader since her husband forbids her to write and would “meet [her] with heavy opposition” should he find her doing so (390). The woman’s secret correspondence with the reader is yet another example of the limited viewpoint, for no one else is ever around to comment or give their thoughts on what is occurring. The limited perspective the reader sees through her narration plays an essential role in helping the reader understand the theme by showing the woman’s place in the world. At ...
Since the resolution of World War II, the United States has been involved in over fifteen extensive military wars. Recent wars between Iraq and Afghanistan are being fought over several issues which affect women in both the United States and the other nations. While the military is often thought of a male dominated institution, women are present and affected all throughout the system as soldiers, caretakers, partners, and victims. Transnational feminists often fight against war due to the vulnerability that is placed on women during times of war. Despite often being overlooked, there is no doubt that women are heavily included in the devastating consequences of war.
Kingston, Maxine Hong. "No Name Woman." 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. 4th Edition. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 227-39. Print.
Cultures can shape the identities of individuals. Kingston identity was shape by Chinese and Chinese American culture. "No Name Woman," begins with a talk-story, about Kingston’ aunt she never knew. The aunt had brought disgrace upon her family by having an illegitimate child. In paragraph three, “she could not have been pregnant, you see, because her husband had been gone for years” (621). This shows that Kingston’s aunt had an affair with someone and the result was her pregnancy. She ended up killing herself and her baby by jumping into the family well in China. After hearing the story, Kingston is not allowed to mention her aunt again. The ideas of gender role-play an important role in both cultures. Kingston in her story “No Name Woman” describes some of the gender roles and expectations both women and men had to abide. Some of the gender roles in Kingston story have a semblance with the contemporary American culture.
In Maxine Hong Kingston’s autobiographical piece “Silence”, she describes her inability to speak English when she was in grade school. Kindergarten was the birthplace of her silence because she was a Chinese girl attending an American school. She was very embarrassed of her inability, and when moments came up where she had to speak, “self-disgust” filled her day because of that squeaky voice she possessed (422). Kingston notes that she never talked to anyone at school for her first year of silence, except for one or two other Chinese kids in her class. Maxine’s sister, who was even worse than she was, stayed almost completely silent for three years. Both went to the same school and were in the same second grade class because Maxine had flunked kindergarten.
Kingston's narrator tackles this repression when she sympathetically frames No Name Woman's story as one of subjugation, pointing out that "women in the old Ch...