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The conflict in the woman warrior by maxine hong kingston
The theme of social class in literature
The conflict in the woman warrior by maxine hong kingston
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For the last two weeks, I have partaken of a book not on the reading list submitted back in July: Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. What Kingston has written exudes majesty plus lyricism to a point where readers cannot help sensing enchantment. Her writing doesn’t use advanced images for impressing anyone. The language she uses assists readers with seeing differentiated truthfulness kinds. Within one section, entitled “White Tigers,” Kingston explains how becoming trained in warriors’ ways has helped to change her perception of herself and the world surrounding her. She explains how such a sight kind makes seeing a person or thing as if it was engaging in a dance possible. Maybe it can explain what gets accomplished by how Kingston …show more content…
May my people understand the resemblance soon so…I can return to [where they are]. What we have in common are the words [as wind] at our backs. The idioms for revenge are ‘report a crime’ and ‘report to five families.’ [I’ve got] so many words—‘chink’ words and ‘gook’ words too—that they do not fit [upon] my skin” (Kingston 53). She shows the way linguistics shift personal ways involving thoughts plus beliefs getting manifested. Knowledge involving many languages serves to complicate ideas on what is real: “To make my waking life American-normal, I turn on the lights before [something] untoward [shows itself]. I push the deformed into my dreams…in Chinese, the language of impossible stories. Before we can leave our parents, they stuff our heads [the same way they stuff] the suitcases which they [cram] with homemade underwear” (Kingston 87). Her aunt’s spouse treats their old life as a classic book: “‘Why didn’t you write to [say] you weren’t coming back [or] sending for her?’ Brave Orchid asked. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s as if I had turned into a different person. [My] new life…pulled me away. You became people in a book I had read a long time ago’” (Kingston
Language is an important part of who we are. It influences the way we think and behave on a great scale. However, sometimes it is forced upon us to go in different directions just so we can physically and mentally feel as if we belong to the society in which we live in. Just as we see in Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez’s “A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”, both authors faced some challenges along the way by coping with two different languages, while still trying to achieve the social position which they desired.
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.
Language has the power to influence and reshape our thoughts and actions. In Anthem, by Ayn Rand, there is a society which controls the language of everyone in it. Under the World Council, everyone is to follow the many rules put in place and no one even tries to break them. There is no “I” in their language, there is only “we”. With the power to influence and reshape people, language has a big impact on our thoughts and actions.
Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” is a short science fiction story that explores the principals of linguistic relativity through in interesting relationship between aliens and humans that develops when aliens, known as Heptapods, appear on Earth. In the story Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist hired by the government to learn the Heptapods language, tells her unborn daughter what she has learned from the Heptapods as a result of learning their language. M. NourbeSe Philip’s poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language” also explores the topic of language and translations, as she refers to different languages as her “mother tongue” or “father tongue.” Although these two pieces of literature may not seem to have much in common both explore the topics of language and translation and connect those ideas to power and control.
English is an invisible gate. Immigrants are the outsiders. And native speakers are the gatekeepers. Whether the gate is wide open to welcome the broken English speakers depends on their perceptions. Sadly, most of the times, the gate is shut tight, like the case of Tan’s mother as she discusses in her essay, "the mother tongue." People treat her mother with attitudes because of her improper English before they get to know her. Tan sympathizes for her mother as well as other immigrants. Tan, once embarrassed by her mother, now begins her writing journal through a brand-new kaleidoscope. She sees the beauty behind the "broken" English, even though it is different. Tan combines repetition, cause and effect, and exemplification to emphasize her belief that there are more than one proper way (proper English) to communicate with each other. Tan hopes her audience to understand that the power of language- “the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth”- purposes to connect societies, cultures, and individuals, rather than to rank our intelligence.
Throughout the book, The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, the generation gap between the narrator and Brave Orchid is evident. The narrator feels that her mother's culture values have no relevance in America. In the chapter, At the Western Palace, Brave Orchid sends for her sister, Moon Orchid, to come to America and urges Moon Orchid to confront her sister's husband. The ideas that Brave Orchid has are bold and they conflict with Moon Orchid's nature. Brave Orchid and Moon Orchid are two Chinese women who live in two different countries. They are separated by a cultural gap rather than a generation gap. This gap between Brave Orchid and Moon Orchid has created two inimical viewpoints on the value of physical appearance, necessity versus extravagance, and modesty in manner.
Katherine Anne Porter’s use of irony in “Old Mortality” serves to weave an image through the reader’s mind—an image that reveals the danger of romanticizing the past. In hindsight things always appear better, such as Harry’s recollection that all his female relatives are thin “thank god,” when there are several extreme examples of when this was not the case. In life, nobody can be as perfect as someone else is in death, even though things might not have been so at the time. It is a great difficulty to live up to people from the past, especially people who conformed so well, and never got the chance to lose what is loved most about them—their beauty.
As newer generations take on the responsibility of passing down their people’s history and culture, ancestral costumes are maintained but altered to suit current social standards. Through Maxine Hong Kingston’s autobiography The Woman Warrior, a memoir of myths and her mother’s narratives, the author is given a sense of empowerment as she discovers her own identity and, thus, her place in the world. Growing up, Kingston struggled with her dual heritage, not knowing whether to follow her family’s Chinese customs or live up to American society’s cultural and social norms. As a Chinese American, Kingston adapted the principles of these two distinct cultures to suit her own lifestyle, this led to her dual oppression by both American and Chinese culture and society; her mother often disregarded her opinions because she considered her to be “half a ghost”; a Chinese American. Although the autobiography does not reveal much of Kingston’s personal struggles, the narratives within it do reflect and follow her discovery of her personal identity. Her mothers’ parenting skills of complying to and contradicting stereotypes of oriental women, permitted her to visualize the potential to attain a better life and to be the exception of the ongoing stereotype of the submissive oriental woman. By rebelling against certain aspects her Chinese heritage, Kingston set high standards for herself and other Chinese American women and this serves as an inspiration for other oppressed oriental women.
Crystal, David. "Language and Thought." in Language: Readings in Language and Culture, Sixth Edition. Clark, Virgina P., Eschholtz, Pual A., Rosa, Alfred F., editors. St. Matin's Press. New York. 1998. p. 631-32
Many points of view come from people who share powerful stories with hidden messages, which change other people’s lives. Maxine Hong Kingston’s book, “The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts,” is about the stories she had grown up hearing throughout childhood, mainly of women who have had a significant role in her life. She writes about the memories, fantasies, and speculation of women’s lives who have impacted hers. The power of this book comes from the ‘talk-story’ or stories such as Fa Mu Lan, and Ts’ai Yen told by her family, because these bring her the strength on her path of finding her identity and gaining a better understand of her own place in the world. Also, Kingston shares language with women so that they can discover
Lindberg, Laurie. "Wordsmith and Woman: Morag Gunn's Triumph Through Language." New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence: Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism, and Feminism. Ed. Greta M. K. McCormick Coger. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996. 187-201.
...xpressing her Chinese culture. Mastering a second language allows her to articulate her and her mother’s thoughts; it is a foundation for her pride and a foundation to express herself. For Gloria Anzaldua, instead of choosing one language over the other, she chose a mix of the two and fights for it. She realized the value of her language when she lost it and now treasures it. The kind of Spanish she speaks is neither English nor Spanish, but both. It is overflowing with culture from Medieval Spain, France, Germany, etc., just from the origins of the words. It is her pride and a representation of herself, fighting and living. In conclusion, in addition to Lera Boroditsky’s article proving that the structure of language affects how we think, the articles by Eric Liu, Amy Tan, and Gloria Anzaldua show how language is a foundation for a person’s culture, pride, and self.
Do you think it is fair for women not to go into battle even if they want to help out the military? Even though women are thought of being weak, some women are more capable than other men in battle. The issue is that people never think of women strong. They just think of men and how men are stronger. I think that women should go to battle because they train for the same thing as men. If people need examples and why women should be in combat, I will explain and show you why women should have the same rights as men to serve in the military.
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
Aubery Tanqueray, a self-made man, is a Widower at the age of Forty two with a beautiful teenage daughter, Ellean whom he seems very protective over. His deceased wife, the first Mrs. Tanqueray was "an iceberg," stiff, and assertive, alive as well as dead (13). She had ironically died of a fever "the only warmth, I believe, that ever came to that woman's body" (14). Now alone because his daughter is away at a nunnery he's found someone that can add a little life to his elite, high class existence; a little someone, we learn, that has a past that doesn't quite fit in with the rest of his friends.