Woman Warrior Summary

A Short Analysis of Ghosts in Woman Warrior
In Chapter 3 of Woman Warrior, Kingston portrays “ghosts” as people who she does not quite associate herself with directly. She argues, “America has been full of machines and ghosts” (96), and then goes on to classify the many different types of these “ghosts”. Thus, at this point in the book, ghosts appear to be actual people. There are “Taxi Ghosts, Bus Ghosts, Police Ghosts, Fire Ghosts, Meter Reader Ghosts, Tree Trimming Ghosts, Five-and-Dime Ghosts” (97). These titles act as ways to classify the Americans around her. These people are ghosts because they represent a culture she does not feel completely connected to as a Chinese-American girl. The characters in the story actually identified as people all seem to be the narrator’s family who are Chinese. This becomes more clear when Kingston goes on to write,
Once upon a time the world was so thick with ghosts, I could hardly breathe; I could hardly walk, limping my way around the White Ghosts and their cars. There were Black ghosts too, but they were open eyed and full of laughter, more distinct than White Ghosts. (97)

Thus, “White Ghosts” and “Black Ghosts” appear to be people of races different from her own.

As the author describes trying to understand the cultures around her, she uses the term “ghosts” to separate people whom her mother does not feel connected to culturally from what she presumes to be the Chinese world. This separation also seems to carry a fear with it. Just as one expects to be scared of a traditional ghost or spirit, Kingston describes being frightened and running from the “Newsboy Ghost” (97-98). However, she also describes imitating this ghost: “We collected old Chinese newspapers and trekked about the house and yard . . .We made up our own English. (97) Thus, the ghosts, though representing fear of American culture, also represented a way for the author and other Chinese children to navigate and understand American

culture.
On the other hand, Kingston also describes her Chinese aunt with no name as a “ghost”. She details how her aunt, as a disgraced, intentionally forgotten member of the family, must go hungry, never receiving gifts from her living family. In this way, the aunt differs from the ghosts in Chapter 3, as she is actually dead. Moreover, Kingston writes “My aunt haunts me-- her ghost drawn to me because… I alone devote pages of paper to her… I am telling on her” (16). So, the aunt as a ghost represents a different kind of fear for the author. Rather than a fear of American culture, the aunt embodies a fear of betrayal of Kingston’s Chinese culture, whether that be through repeating her aunt’s mistakes or through telling her disgraced aunt’s story on paper. Thus, though the ghosts in Chapter 3 describe people, while the aunt is a ghost in the more classical sense of the word, in both cases, Kingston uses the classification of “ghost” to express fear and an uncertain desire to connect to the cultures that surround and influence her.