On Discovery (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Maxine Hong Kingston
- First Published: 1980
- Type of Plot: Fable
- Time of Work: The distant past
- Setting: The Land of Women
- Principal Characters: Tang Ao, Several women
- Genres: Fable, Short fiction
- Subjects: Mythology or myths, Sexism, Gender roles, Asia or Asians, Women, Legends, Folklore, Asian Americans, China or Chinese people, Chinese Americans, Fables
- Locales: Land of Women (mythic)
The Story
“On Discovery,” the first story in Maxine Hong Kingston's collection entitled China Men (1980), is a fairy tale that begins as most fairy tales do with “Once upon a time.” Tang Ao, a warrior who is looking for the Gold Mountain, the traditional Chinese name for America, crosses an ocean and happens on a kind of utopia called the Land of Women, in which there are neither taxes nor wars. Consistent with the fairy-tale atmosphere is the narrator's comment that scholars cannot agree on the exact time and place for the narrative. Some argue that the Tang Ao...
[The entire page is 1444 words long]
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