Maxine Hong Kingston, in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, explores, among other themes, the significance of Asia in relation to America for the people in her book. Kingston examines the impact on herself and others of the cultural clash they experience as they try to fashion a hybrid reality out of contrasting American and Chinese cultures and perceptions of life. Among the many questions the book tries to answer in this regard, there are the following:
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 Chinese tradition and what is the movies? (Kingston 5-6).
It is clear that Kingston seeks to demolish the idea that Chinese in general and Chinese women particularly are raised to be docile creatures who do not make trouble. Referring to the Chinese tradition of "talk-stories," she writes that Chinese girls are raised to see "that we failed if we grew up to but wives or slaves. We could be heroines, swordswomen. Even if she had to rage across all China, a swordswoman got even with anybody who hurt her family" (Kingston 19).
On the other hand, Kingston recognizes that such stories of Asian bravery and action do not easily translate into the reality of America, particularly for immigrants. For example, the author's mother, after telling her of an aunt who was ostracized and then killed herself and her newborn child because of that ostracism and the shame of becoming pregnant before marriage, adds:
Don't let your father know that I told you. He denies her. Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don't humiliate us. You wouldn't like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful (Kingston 5).
Clearly, Kingston is receiving powerfully mix...