Identity and Search for Self
People develop their personal identities through their life experiences and interactions with others. The Woman Warrior presents five narratives from Kingston's life that play a crucial role in her personal development and identity formation.
From an early age, Maxine grapples with understanding her true self and her place within her family, Chinese heritage, and American culture. As a young child in kindergarten, Maxine is silent, not speaking to her classmates or teachers. She battles to overcome this silence, seeking to find herself and connect with both her Chinese and American communities. Her mother's "talk stories" and warnings about "ghosts" leave Maxine feeling trapped between two worlds. For three years, she remains completely mute. Illustrating the peculiarity of her silence, she covers her school paintings in black, worrying her teachers about her mental well-being.
Maxine also questions whether her mother truly loves her. She observes that her parents treat the girls in the family differently from the boys. For example, the family celebrates the boys' birthdays with special events and praises their accomplishments, while the girls are often insulted and overlooked. Maxine's mother, in particular, sends her mixed signals that make her feel powerless. She criticizes Maxine, calling her stupid and ugly. Yet, paradoxically, Maxine's mother also attempts to empower her by sharing stories of a different life. She tells Maxine tales of Fa Mu Lan, the legendary warrior girl who is strong, intelligent, and brave. These stories inspire Maxine to envision a life for women that is vastly different from her own or her mother's. She dreams of becoming a warrior woman herself.
Maxine's mother experiences her own identity crisis. In China, Brave Orchid defied traditional roles to attend medical school in a distant city. After graduating, she worked as a respected doctor and midwife. However, upon relocating to America, she finds herself back in the roles of mother, wife, and servant, much like before becoming a doctor.
By the sixth grade, Maxine's bottled-up frustrations lead her to confront another quiet Chinese girl who reminds her too much of herself. This incident helps Maxine find and unleash her angry voice, which she later uses to challenge her mother. In expressing her anger, frustrations, and fears, Maxine recounts the indignities she has faced. Her enraged mother then demands that she leave.
Distancing herself from her mother and Chinese traditions, Maxine begins to reconcile her Chinese identity with her American identity. She starts to gain a deeper understanding of her family and heritage. Eventually, she even begins to "talk story" herself, finally claiming an identity of her own.
Flesh vs. Spirit
Maxine's mother frequently cautions her about the numerous "ghosts" she must live alongside in America, advising her not to imitate them. As a result, Maxine becomes anxious about all the White Ghosts, from the Taxi Ghost to the Police Ghost. Yet, the Newsboy Ghost frightens her the most. Standing alone on the street without his parents, his apparent defiance amazes her, prompting her to run away in fear. Her mother also reminds her that Chinese ghosts reside within their family and warns her against repeating their errors. For example, the No-Name Aunt represents family shame due to defying traditional norms.
Even though the ghosts in Maxine’s life aren't supernatural, they instill the same kind of panic that people experience when they think they've seen a ghost. She feels overwhelmed by the many American ghosts she encounters every day.
It isn't until adulthood that Maxine realizes her mother's ghost stories were actually Brave Orchid's way of rejecting her reality in America and holding onto her Chinese identity. Eventually, Maxine's mother releases her old image of...
(This entire section contains 225 words.)
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China, recognizing that it has changed from what she once knew. This understanding allows Maxine to let go of the "ghosts" that have haunted her throughout her life, freeing her from her fear of China. By doing so, she discovers she can embrace both her mother and her Chinese heritage.
Sexism
Maxine receives mixed messages from her mother regarding a woman's role in society. Brave Orchid shares legendary tales about the renowned woman warrior, Fa Mu Lan, which inspire Maxine to imagine herself as a triumphant heroine. Yet, at the same time, she discourages Maxine's ambitions with recurring stories like the one about the No-Name Aunt. Through these narratives, Brave Orchid emphasizes to Maxine that traditions are still strong in China and that defying them leads to consequences. Chinese women are expected to dedicate their lives to serving their husbands and, even more importantly, their in-laws. The practice of foot-binding symbolizes the lifelong self-sacrifice expected of Chinese women. A traditional Chinese woman is expected to let her husband support her while she serves as both his servant and partner.
Even in America, Chinese families continue to uphold misogyny, or the disdain for women. For instance, Maxine's cousins' grandfather refers to the girls as "maggots." The image of the woman warrior haunts Maxine, who feels bitter about the preferential treatment her brothers receive. Families throw lavish parties for the boys' birthdays and give them impressive gifts like bicycles, while the girls' birthdays are mostly overlooked. When girls do receive presents, they are practical items like typewriters, intended to prepare them for a life of servitude. Maxine notices these inequalities and challenges her mother about them. She longs to become the woman warrior, the Chinese woman who successfully defies tradition.
Reality and Identity
Kingston notes that stories such as her nameless aunt's tale ("We say your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born") were employed by her mother to "test our strength to establish realities." The concept of reality, seen as a complex tapestry of diverse impressions and experiences, is a central theme in the autobiography. As a child, Kingston would listen to her mother’s "talk-story" at bedtime, finding it difficult to determine where the stories stopped and the dreams started. These observations emphasize Kingston's theme that storytelling, fantasy, history, and art seamlessly merge with personal experiences to shape one's identity. The impact of the past, along with traditions, folklore, and myths, in influencing the present is evident throughout the narrative. At times, the narrator longs to break free from the weight of the past, its traditions, societal norms, and misogyny, to exist only in the present. She admits that "even now, China wraps double binds around my feet." Her challenge, similar to that of many first-generation Americans, is "to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America."
Power of Language
Language acts as a bridge connecting various realities, linking the past with the present, the hidden world of Chinese customs or biases, and the visible realm of American culture. The central theme of the book is the power of words to either imprison or free. Words serve as vessels for conveying one's perception of the world. Through literal, figurative, and symbolic language, individuals express their deepest feelings and bring order and meaning to a wide range of experiences.
Kingston often highlights how everyday expressions can shape a person's perspective or self-worth: "There is a Chinese word for the female I — which is 'slave.' Break the women with their own tongues!" She ends her tale of the legendary warrior Fu Ma Lan by reflecting that both the heroine and the author share "the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are 'report a crime' and 'report to five families.' The reporting is the vengeance — not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. And I have so many words — 'chink' words and 'gook' words too — that they do not fit on my skin." While words restricted her as a child, Kingston realizes through her autobiography that words can also be like swords, cutting through early limitations, freeing her from traditional roles and stereotypes, and allowing her to shape her own identity as a Chinese-American.
