Regina Richardson
Dr. Craig White
American Immigrant
22 April 2002

Kingston is the Warrior Woman

In Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of Girlhood among Ghosts, the reader recognizes characteristics representative of the immigrant narrative.  Kingston addresses the search for an identity between an Old World Chinese heritage and her American heritage.  To establish her identity, Kingston examines the relationship between her Old World mother and the New World.  Meanwhile, The Woman Warrior challenges the reader to distinguish the text as fiction or nonfiction.  Although “memoirs” is included in the title, Kingston includes her memories as well as her mother’s memories.  Kingston narrates her mother’s memories in the form of a talk-story.  A talk-story is a Chinese myth, fable, or Chinese history (Kubota 2).  Kingston employs the talk-story to move from the Old World back into the New World.  Kingston begins the first chapter entitled “No Name Woman” with a talk-story:

You must not tell anyone, my mother said, what I am about to tell you. 

In China, your father had a sister who killed herself.  She jumped into the

family well.  We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if

she had never been born. (1)

“No Name Woman” represents the problem of identity for a woman in Chinese culture.  The aunt disgraces the family when she commits adultery and becomes pregnant.  After the aunt gives birth, the aunt drowns herself and the baby in the family well.  Consequently, nobody in the family or the village ever speaks her name again.  The pregnancy separates the aunt from the Chinese communal identity.  Communal identity connects the aunt to the family and village thereby making them one body.  Kingston suggests that the failure of the family and villagers to acknowledge the aunt by name rejects the aunt as a woman.  As a Chinese woman, the aunt’s pregnancy signifies an act of individuality and places her outside of the family and community.  Accordingly, Kingston who is a Chinese-American woman has individuality, but she lacks an identity.  Therefore, Kingston must choose an Old World Chinese identity or a New World American identity.

In Rosetta Haynes’ “Intersections of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Experimentation,” she believes that Kingston’s “No Name Woman” connects individuality to the woman.  Haynes also believes Kingston’s relationship with her mother functions to develop her identity.  Haynes states:

[…] the centrality of her relationship with her mother help[s] to shape her

identity and her text.  It is the dynamics of mother/daughter interactions

which play a fundamental role in forming their sense of self and the

narrative form through which she represents her life story.  (134)

            In The Woman Warrior, Kingston’s mother leaves China in the winter of 1939 and arrives in New York Harbor in January 1940.  Kingston is later born during the middle of World War II (112-113).  The mother is born in her Chinese homeland, whereas Kingston is born in America.  The idea of home to the first generation immigrant and second generation immigrant establishes a foundation for identity.  Kingston states, “Whenever my parents said “home,” they suspended America” (116).  Kingston parents do not accept Stockton, California as home, home for them is in China.  However, Kingston accepts America as home because America represents of part of which she is.  Consequently, after Kingston’s dad sells the land in China back to his former village, she asks her mother, “Will American flowers smell good now?”  Her mother replies, “I don’t want to go back anyway.  I’ve gotten used to eating” (125).  The mother no longer desires the Old World because the New World provides sustenance.  The Old World now reminds the mother of poverty and starvation.  The idea of home for the mother moves from China to America.  Nevertheless, Kingston’s mom continues to tell her talk-story to maintain her Old World culture.  The Old World culture is one that the mother wants her children to retain.  Although the mother does not want to go back to the Old World, she tells the children:

This is a terrible country, where a human being works her life away.

Milk Ghost drove his white truck from house to house every other day.  […]  We were regularly visited by the Mail Ghost, the Meter Reader Ghosts, Garbage Ghost.  They came nosing at windows—Social Worker Ghost; Public Health Nurse Ghosts; Factory Ghosts recruiting workers during the war.  (Kingston 114-5)

The mother uses “ghost” to represent the white dominant culture.  The passage signifies that the dominant culture is everywhere in the New World.  In the Old World, the mother would not see these ghosts working in her village.  For Kingston’s mom the dominant culture marginalizes the Chinese culture in society.  In Malini Schueller’s Contemporary American Women Writers, she suggests:

                        Ghosts is perhaps the most dialogically used term in the book because it

                        describes the experience of living within both Chinese and American

cultures.  Ghost is an appelation used for any concept that defies clear

interpretation.

One may imply that “ghost” may reflect how Kingston’s mother perceives her Chinese-American children.  The children represent the culture of the Chinese and American living in her home.  Subsequently, Kingston remembers, “They called us a kind of ghost” (213-214).  Ghost is a factor to help Kingston decide which culture she will live in.  Thus, Kingston must choose to live as Chinese or American like her mother chose between Old World and New World for her home.   

            Kingston’s novel allows her to create an identity by choosing the Chinese culture and American culture.  Kingston recognizes that she and her siblings are different from their Old World parents.  Kingston states, “we had been born among ghosts, were taught by ghosts, and were ourselves ghostlike” (213).  Kingston is influence by the dominant society.  However, Kingston chooses not to be limited by her American birth or education.  Kingston uses both her birth and education to maintain individuality in the Chinese culture.  Furthermore, Kingston chooses not to accept the Old World instead of the New World.  Kingston joins both worlds. 

            Kingston’s narrative does not remain true to any one genre.  The reader can interpret the novel as autobiography, but Kingston does not remain in that mode throughout the book.  In E. D. Huntley’s, Maxine Hong Kingston, he claims,  “The Woman Warrior […] resists categorization within specific genres and traditional textual geographies.  The book is obviously not a novel, although pieces of fiction are embedded in the text.  The Warrior Woman has been labeled both fiction and nonfiction […]” (39).  The reader concurs that Kingston’s book does not properly fit into either genre of fiction or nonfiction.  Kingston employs the technique of using a “talk story” throughout the narrative.  Each chapter includes a talk-story that produces a fictional quality.  However, Kingston moves between talk-story and narrative.  This style makes Kingston’s narrative unique to readers who have limited exposure to different forms of immigrant narratives.  Nevertheless, immediately after employing a “talk-story,” Kingston retells the talk-story as it relates to her in the New World.  At one point, Kingston confronts her mother about the talk-story.  Kingston tells her mother:

                        You lie with stories.  You won’t tell me a story and then say, ‘This is a

                        true story,’ or, ‘This is just a story.’  I can’t tell the difference.  I don’t

even know what your real names are.  I can’t tell what’s real and what you

make up. (235)

            In Kingston’s struggle to find her own identity, the talk-story offers no relevant meaning.  Kingston questions what is true or false.  Kingston further states, “I don’t know any Chinese I can ask without getting myself scolded or teased, so I’ve been looking in books” (238).  Since Kingston’s mother continues to keep the tradition of the Old World alive through the stories, Kingston tries to reconnect with the Old World.  Although Kingston searches for Chinese meanings in books, she still is unable to understand.  Finally, Kingston says to her mother, “Soon I want to go to China and find out who’s lying-- […]” (239).  The reader may speculate for the first-generation immigrant the Old World is shaped in myths and fables.  To speculate further, the second-generation immigrant understands his/her identity when the Old World myths merge with the New World.

From Gary Kubota’s “Maxine Hong Kingston: Something Comes from the Outside Onto the Paper,” Kingston, in her words, explains what The Woman Warrior is:

                        I thought of it as a novel when I mailed it out to the publishers.  In some

ways, it is (autobiographical).  I might have felt the same emotions as the

main character, the girl, at moments in my life.  But when I wrote the

book, I certainly didn’t feel that way anymore.  The stories within the

book are based mostly on my past experiences as a child living with my

parents in Stockton, California.  […] I was constantly listening to them

(parents) and my relatives talk-story.  Their recollections of myths, fables

and Chinese History turned out to be amazingly accurate.  (2)

            The reader can conclude Kingston writes the narrative to explore herself as a Chinese-American.  Through the exploration process, Kingston takes what she hears from the Old World (parents and relatives) and develops that oral history.  As the process develops, Kingston changes how she thinks as a Chinese-American.  Kingston did not experience the journey like her parents, but she learns about it through the talk-story.  Kingston rediscovers her Chinese heritage from the talk-story, then reinvents the talk-story to establish her American identity.  After merging the Chinese and American identities, Kingston balances the Chinese-American woman between both worlds.

Now the reader can understand the following passage means you have to learn

from the Old World and the New World to become whole.

The Chinese I know hid their names; sojourners take new names when their lives change and guard their real names with silence.  Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese?  What is the Chinese tradition and what is the movies?  (Kingston 6)

As a person born within two cultures, you understand when you accept the stories of your family.  You define yourself when the traditions become meaningful.

Works Cited

Haynes, Rosetta R. “Intersections of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Experimentation in the Autobiographical Writings of Cherrie Moraga and Maxine Hong Kingston.”  Women of Color: Defining the Issues, Hearing The Voices.  Ed. Diane Long Hoeveler, et al. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001. 133-145.

Huntley, E. D. Maxine Hong Kingston A Critical Companion.  Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001.

Kingston, Maxine Hong.  The Warrior Woman: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts.  New York: Vintage House, 1976.

Kubota, Gary.  “Maxine Hong Kingston: Something Comes from Outside Onto the Paper.”  Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston.  Ed. Peggy Whitman Prenshaw.  Mississippi: University Press, 1998.  1-4.

Schueller, Malini Johar.  “Questioning Race and Gender Definitions: Dialogic Subversions in The Warrior Woman.”  Contemporary American Women Writers: Gender, Class, Ethnicity.  Ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora.  London: Longman, 1999.