The Woman Warrior
This is an excerpt from the paper...
In the introduction to When Memory Speaks, Ker Conway (1999) frequently discusses the dilemma of duality for female writers, both in terms of maintaining a separate voice and gender and writing autobiography in a culture, language, and consciousness that are male dominated: ôWhat makes the reading of autobiography so appealing is the chance it offers to see how this man or that womanàhas negotiated the problem of self-awareness and has broken the internalized code a culture supplies about how life should be experienced.ö For Maxine Hong Kingston, a Chinese American female, culture presented a dual ethnic dilemma in addition to a dual gender dilemma. Hong Kingston chose to become a writer to find expression for defining self, something that is readily apparent in the largely autobiographical The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. While a review of KingstonÆs novel might equally fit in ConwayÆs sections entitled ôFeminist Plotsö, ôAssertive Womenö, and ôGrim Talesö, I believe it most fits into the section labeled ôWord and Image,ö because of the nature of both silence and voice in The Woman Warrior. The Woman Warrior recounts the struggles of a Chinese American girl to find herself, feeling distanced both from her familyÆs rigid culture that places a premium value on ôsonsö and American culture which views her as ôdifferentö. Language, words, and voice are extremely important throughout the story. Communication become
. . .
attempts to find her own sense, identity and meaning against a backdrop of dualistic cultures, beliefs, and understandings.
Ker Conway (1999) maintains that, ôWhether we are aware of it or not, our culture gives us an inner script by which we live our lives.ö In The Woman Warrior we see a most powerful expression of this in the scene where Maxine tortures another girl in the lavatory. She pinches the girlÆs cheeks and pulls her hair, trying to make the ôsilentö girl utter even one word. The girl refuses to say anything, despite MaxineÆs harsh treatment of her and telling her it is for her own good. Showing how unaware she is as a young woman about the influence of her own culture, Maxine mimics her motherÆs controlling nature in this scene, telling others what to do and making them somehow feel that how they are and who they are is not good. Yet this powerful scene has an enormous significance on the growth and maturity of Maxine. She realizes oppression is often the result of a lack of understanding and only a reflection of self. As Teleki (2001) writes in his review of the book, in this scene ôrather than persisting as oppressor and defining another, she sees that monster figures can be reflections of our own fears abou
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Chinese American, Woman Warrior, Ker Conway, Likewise Kingston, Wendy Ho, Girlhood Ghosts, Hong Kingston, Teleky Spring, Shu Summer, Imageö Maxine, woman warrior, kingston 1976, hong kingston, ker conway, chinese american, ker conway 1999, conway 1999, warrior memoirs girlhood, maxine discovers, maxine hong, own voice, human voice, kingston 1976 narrator, memoirs girlhood ghosts, maxine hong kingston,
Approximate Word count = 1272
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
More Essays on The Woman Warrior
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
