Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior explores themes of cultural identity and women's storytelling through five interconnecting narratives. The work examines the stories passed down from the author's mother about female roles and identities in their Chinese culture. Through engaging in a dialog with her mother's words, Kingston struggles to develop her own voice and sense of self while questioning the frameworks of gender presented in the stories she was told.
Storying the Self in Nigerian Gender Discourse: A Critical Evaluation of Chim...inventionjournals
:This article offers a critical review of the Nigerian female writer ChimamandaNgoziAdichie’s autobiographical essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014). Beyond the binarism of self and other and male and female inherent to any work on gender, we study the concept of Happy Feminism and its related issues introduced by Adichie in Nigerian gender discourse. By contrast with classic feminism, happy feminism is defined as a kind of feminism adapted to the African cultural context which empowers African women, improves their self-esteem and excludes any form of sexism, misogyny, misandry or emasculation. Based on a Personality Psychological approach to personal narratives and using a narratological and socio-literary framework, this article explores and puts into question the relevance of the term Happy Feminism by confronting it to current studies on Nigerian gender discourse. While not neglecting Adichie’s contribution to the elaboration of Nigerian gender discourse, the article highlights the fact that the concept of Happy Feminism is problematically undertheorised.
The requirement for this English 102 paper was that it be a comparison/contrast using three different literary elements. I had the instructor take a look at it before I inserted the citations & added the bibliography. He told me as far as he was concerned it was an A paper.
An Attitude of Defiance - Shakespeare's womenEloivene Blake
I will be exploring this distinctive characteristic as I look at the virtues and mishaps of Shakespeare's women in the context of the Shakespearean comedy.
To the exclusion of other socio-political and cultural constructs, African female writers have often concentrated on problematizing the trajectories of feminine experience. They have simultaneously foregrounded the pains and the gains of being a female on the continent. They have, however, shown more interest in thematizing the positive, believing, as such, that what obtains in the work of the male writers is negative presentation of the female. The female writers have also contended that Womanism, the continental variety of Feminism, is more suitable for African women because of its recognition of peculiar contextual and racial vectors. These trajectories, anathema in other contexts, with other races, define an experience that is not only unique, but form a significant core of female experience in Africa. This paper examines the female-centred plot of Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes and concludes that the quandary of the protagonist further externalises the dilemma of Womanism in Africa; to imbibe the individualistic and confrontational values of Feminism or remain true to the tradition of Womanism which celebrates femininity as a complementation to masculinity and venerates motherhood as a unique female facility.
Storying the Self in Nigerian Gender Discourse: A Critical Evaluation of Chim...inventionjournals
:This article offers a critical review of the Nigerian female writer ChimamandaNgoziAdichie’s autobiographical essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014). Beyond the binarism of self and other and male and female inherent to any work on gender, we study the concept of Happy Feminism and its related issues introduced by Adichie in Nigerian gender discourse. By contrast with classic feminism, happy feminism is defined as a kind of feminism adapted to the African cultural context which empowers African women, improves their self-esteem and excludes any form of sexism, misogyny, misandry or emasculation. Based on a Personality Psychological approach to personal narratives and using a narratological and socio-literary framework, this article explores and puts into question the relevance of the term Happy Feminism by confronting it to current studies on Nigerian gender discourse. While not neglecting Adichie’s contribution to the elaboration of Nigerian gender discourse, the article highlights the fact that the concept of Happy Feminism is problematically undertheorised.
The requirement for this English 102 paper was that it be a comparison/contrast using three different literary elements. I had the instructor take a look at it before I inserted the citations & added the bibliography. He told me as far as he was concerned it was an A paper.
An Attitude of Defiance - Shakespeare's womenEloivene Blake
I will be exploring this distinctive characteristic as I look at the virtues and mishaps of Shakespeare's women in the context of the Shakespearean comedy.
To the exclusion of other socio-political and cultural constructs, African female writers have often concentrated on problematizing the trajectories of feminine experience. They have simultaneously foregrounded the pains and the gains of being a female on the continent. They have, however, shown more interest in thematizing the positive, believing, as such, that what obtains in the work of the male writers is negative presentation of the female. The female writers have also contended that Womanism, the continental variety of Feminism, is more suitable for African women because of its recognition of peculiar contextual and racial vectors. These trajectories, anathema in other contexts, with other races, define an experience that is not only unique, but form a significant core of female experience in Africa. This paper examines the female-centred plot of Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes and concludes that the quandary of the protagonist further externalises the dilemma of Womanism in Africa; to imbibe the individualistic and confrontational values of Feminism or remain true to the tradition of Womanism which celebrates femininity as a complementation to masculinity and venerates motherhood as a unique female facility.
A Comprative Analysis of Madness and Female Identity in 'The Wide Sargasso Se...HetalPathak10
This PPT is based on MA Semester 3 presentation on The Postcolonial Studies, presented at the Department of English, MKBU. The topic of this presentation is 'A Comparative Analysis of Madness and Female Identity in'The Wide Saragasso Sea' and 'The Madwoman in the Attic'.
Paper no.203 Wide Sargasso Sea with Feminist ApproachRiddhiRathod31
In this presentation I'm dealing about The feminist analysis of 'Wide Sargasso Sea' uncovers gender oppression, power imbalances, and the 'Othering' of women. It's relevant in feminist literature for its critique of patriarchal colonial society. Encourage further study of feminist themes in the novel, such as by examining scholarly articles or joining discussions on gender issues in literature.
The power of connections with othersand one’s self through BecomingAJHSSR Journal
ABSTRACT: The main aim of this article is to emphasize the importance of the genre of the biography in
order to express an own voice. In this sense, women voices are specially taken into account through history until
the 21st century where female models like Michelle Robinson Obama uses her own voice to legitimise her story
and provide girls all over the world with powerful weapons to fight against injustice, racism and the difficulties
of being oneself. Besides, in her recent biography Becoming (2018), she analyses in-depth the power of
connections with others and one`s self through her life. In this line of argument, she pays attention to how others
contribute to her path and the significance of feeling unique and loved.
KEYWORDS: Biography, Becoming, connections, racism, women voice
Interrogating Hybridity- Reading in Jean Rhys’s 'Wide Sargasso Sea'Hina Parmar
In Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea," the theme of interrogating hybridity is central, examining the complexities of identity, colonialism, and cultural blending. The novel scrutinizes the tensions and conflicts that arise from the mixing of different cultures and backgrounds, particularly through the lens of Antoinette Cosway, exploring the struggles of being caught between multiple worlds and identities.
"I Alone devote pages of papers to her": Kingston's Blurringof Generic and Ge...QUESTJOURNAL
ABSTRACT: Maxine Hong Kingston‟s first two novels are set in a “ Border Country” that is situated at the Intersection between „The Gold Mountain‟ and „China‟. The first text spans the life experience of the female Chinese subject ( mythical, family member , immigrant) as well as all the male descendants , (immigrants) who travelled to the gold mountain. Kingston writing aims to subvert an old tradition of silence in the two continents. First, the two books begin with instances of obstructing communication. In The Woman Warrior, Brave Orchid warns her daughter ―You must not tell anyone‖ (11). In China Men, old women threaten to sew Tang Ao„s lips shut warning him ―The less you struggle, the less it„ll hurt‖ (1). Second both novels close by casting one„s voice while having another ―I‖ to listen and recognize them. Therefore the purpose of this article is to delineate the border space where gender and generic boundaries blur and the Chinese/American subjects operate within moveable limits.
Similar to A poetics of women's autobiography (16)
1. A Poetics of
Women's
Autobiography
Marginality and the Fictions
of Self-Representation
SIDOrilE SMITH
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
3. corroriTS
Acknowledgments be
I Theoretical Considerations :
1. Autobiography Criticism and the Problematics o f Gender 3
2. Renaissance H u m a n i s m and the Misbegotten M a n : A Tension
o f Discourses i n the Emergence o f Autobiogr ap h y 20
3. Woman's Story a n d the Engenderings o f Self-Representation 44
I I Readings
4. The Book of Margery Kempe: T h i s Creature's Unsealed Life 64
5. T h e Ragged Rout o f Self: Margaret Cavendish's True Relation
and the Heroics o f Self-Disclosure 84
6. A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke: T h e
Transgressive Daughter and the Masquerade o f Self-
Representation 102
7. H a r r i e t Martineau's Autobiography: T h e Repressed Desire o f
Life like a Man's 123
8. Maxine H o n g Kingston's Woman Warrior: Filiality and
Woman's Autobiographical Storytelling 150
Coda 174
Notes 177
Index 203
i
4. Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior 151
sense o f "self" and the community's stories o f selfhood, Kingston self-con-
EIGHT sciously reads herself into existence t h r o u g h the stories her culture tells
about women. Using autobiography to create identity, she breaks d o w n the
hegemony o f f o r m a l "autobiography" and breaks out o f the silence that has
b o u n d her culturally to discover a resonant voice o f her own. Furthermore,
as a w o r k coming f r o m an ethnic subculture, The Woman Warrior offers the
Maxine H o n g Kingston's occasion to consider the complex imbroglios o f cultural fictions tha^t s u r -
r o u n d the autobiographer who is engaging two sets o f stories: those t>f the
Woman Warrior dominant culture and those o f an ethnic subculture with its o w n traditions,
its o w n unique stories. As a Chinese American f r o m the w o r k i n g class,
Filiality and Woman's Autobiographical Storytelling Kingston brings to her autobiographical project complicating perspectives
on the relationship o f woman to language and to narrative.
Considered by some a "novel" and by others an "autobiography," the five
It is hard to write about my own mother.
Whatever I do write, it is my story I am narratives conjoined u n d e r the title The Woman Warrior are decidedly five
telling, my version of the past. I f she were confrontations w i t h the fictions o f self-representation and w i t h the a u t o -
to tell her own story other landscapes biographical possibilities embedded i n cultural fictions, specifically as they
would be revealed. But in my landscape or interpenetrate one another i n the. autobiography a woman w o u l d w r i t e . 1
hers, there would be old, smoldering For Kingston, then, as f o r the woman autobiographer generally, the herme-
patches of deep-burning anger.
neutlcs o f self-representation can never be divorced f r o m cultural represen-
— A d r i e n n e Rich, Of Woman Born tations o f woman that delimit the nature o f her access to the w o r d and the
articulation o f her o w n desire. N o r can interpretation be divorced f r o m her
orientation toward the mother, who, as her point o f origin, commands the
tenuous negotiation o f identity and difference i n a drama o f filiality that
Since H a r r i e t Martineau wrote her autobiography i n 1856, many hundreds reaches t h r o u g h the daughter's subjectivity to her textual self-authoring.
o f women have contributed the story o f their lives to the cultural heritage. Preserving the traditions that authorize the old way o f life and enable her
Writers, artists, political figures, intellectuals, businesswomen, actors, a t h - to reconstitute the circle o f the i m m i g r a n t community amidst an alien e n -
letes'—all these and more have marked history i n their own way, both as they vironment, Kingston's mother dominates the life, the landscape, and the
lived their lives and as they wrote about t h e m . A tradition so r i c h and various language o f the text as she dominates the subjectivity o f the daughter who
presents a challenge to the critic o f twentieth-century autobiography. There writes that text. I t is Brave Orchid's voice, commanding, as Kingston notes,
is m u c h to be written about the works; indeed, studies o f twentieth-century "great power" that continually reiterates the discourses o f the c o m m u n i t y i n
autobiography are beginning to emerge. Articles now abound. I do n o t want maxims, talk-story, legends, family histories. As the instrument n a m i n g
to conclude this study o f women's autobiographies without attention to a filial identities and commanding filial obligations, that voice enforces the
contemporary work; b u t I also realize that there are many choices that would authority and legitimacy o f the old culture to name a n d thus control the
have served m y critical purposes. Nonetheless, f o r me at least, no single work place o f woman w i t h i n the patrilineage and thereby to establish the erasure
captures so powerfully the relationship o f gender to genre i n twentieth- o f female desire and the denial o f female self-representation as the basis on
century autobiography as Maxine H o n g Kingston's Woman Warrior. which the perpetuation o f patrilineal descent rests. Yet that same voice
gives shape to other possibilities, tales o f female power and authority that
A n d so i t is fitting to conclude this discussion o f women's autobiography
seem to create a space o f cultural significance for the daughter; and the
w i t h The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, which is, quite
very strength and authority o f the material voice fascinates the daughter
complexly, an autobiography about women's autobiographical storytelling.
because i t "speaks" o f the power o f woman to enunciate her o w n represen-
A postmodern work, i t exemplifies the potential f o r works f r o m the m a r g i n -
tations. Hence storytelling becomes the means t h r o u g h which Brave O r -
alized to challenge the ideology o f individualism and w i t h i t the ideology of^
chid passes on to her daughter all the complexities o f and the ambivalences
gender. Recognizing the inextricable relationship between an individual's
150
5. 152 A POETICS OF WOMEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior 153
about b o t h mother's and daughter's identity as w o m a n i n patriarchal c u l - pened to her could happen to you. D o n ' t humiliate us. You w o u l d n ' t like to
ture. 2 be forgotten as i f you had never been b o r n . T h e villagers are w a t c h f u l ' " (5).
Storytelling also becomes the means t h r o u g h which Kingston confronts , Kingston thus situates the origins o f her autobiography i n her recollection
those complexities and ambivalences. I n dialogic engagement w i t h her o f the story her mother used to contextualize the m o m e n t o f transition
mother's w o r d , she struggles to constitute the voice of her own subjectivity,. ineradicably m a r k i n g female identity and desire. T h a t event, as i t proclaims
to emerge f r o m a past dominated by.stories told to her, ones that inscribe • woman's sexual potency, proclaims also woman's problematic placement
the fictional possibilities o f female selfhood, into a present articulated by
1
w i t h i n the body social, economic, politic, and symbolic. While her body, the
4
her o w n storytelling. H e r text reveals the intensity o f that struggle t h r o u g h - locus o f patrilineal preservation, will be contracted out to male authority to
out childhood and adolescence a n d the persistance of those conflicts i n h e r - serve as the carrier o f legitimate sons and o f the order those sons p e r p e t u -
ent i n self-authoring well i n t o adulthood; for, n o t only is that effort the ate, i t w i l l always r e m a i n a potential source o f disruption and disintegration
subject i n the text; i t is also dramatized by the text. I n the first two n a r r a - i n the community: I t may provide no sons f o r the line of descent; or i t may
tives she re-creates the stories about women a n d their autobiographical.. entertain strangers and thus introduce illegitimate children and an a l t e r n a -
possibilities passed on to her by her mother: first the biographical story of . tive genealogy into the order. Should a daughter opt f o r the latter (unfilial)
5
no-name aunt, an apparent victim and thus a negative model o f female life alternative, warns the mother, the patriarchal order w i l l w o r k efficiendy to
scripts, and then the legendary chant o f the w a r r i o r woman Fa M u L a n , an punish her transgression o f the contract, e l i m i n a t i n g her body a n d name
apparent heroine and positive model. B u t as she explores their fates, K i n g - . f r o m the w o r l d o f things a n d o f discourse. Kingston's aunt has suffered this
ston questions the very basis on which such distinctions are predicated. fate: H e r family, like the villagers, has enacted its own cleansing r i t u a l ; and
Uncovering layer by layer the dynamics and the consequences o f her m o t h - Kingston's mother has perpetuated the r i t u a l i n the very way she tells the
er's interpretations as they resonate w i t h the memories of her past, the story. T h e aunt's name remains unuttered; and her interpretation of events
daughter, as she too passes them on to posterity, circles a r o u n d them, is sacrificed, w i t h i n the mother's text, to concern f o r the villagers' actions.
critiquing them, m a k i n g t h e m her own. N e x t she reconstructs out o f the Only her body assumes significance as itreveals the sign o f its transgression,
autobiographical fragments o f Brave Orchid's o w n Chinese experience a as i t plugs u p the family well.
biography o f her mother, discovering by the way the efficacies o f powerful T h e mother's cautionary tale at once affirms and seeks to cut off the
storytelling for the w o m a n who has fallen i n status w i t h her translation to daughter's kinship w i t h a transgressive female relative and her unrepressed
another culture. I n the f o u r t h piece, an elaborate fabrication played o n sexuality, Kingston acknowledges the effectiveness of that strategy by r e -
6
actual events, she becomes even more keenly attentive to all a u t o b i o g r a p h i - vealing later i n the narrative that f o r a l o n g time she accepted her mother's
cal and biographical representations, i n c l u d i n g her own. L o o k i n g back to interpretation and kept her counsel, thereby colluding i n the perpetuation
the beginnings of her o w n struggle to take a voice, she traces i n the final o f b o t h her own silencing a n d the erasure o f her aunt's name:
narrative the origins o f her o w n hermeneutics. T h e apparent line o f p r o g -
ress, which as i t ends returns us to the beginning, becomes effectively a I have believed that sex was unspeakable and words so strong and fathers so
circle o f sorts, a textual alternative to the constricting patriarchal circle frail that "aunt" would do my father mysterious harm. I have thought that my
Kingston has had to transgress. family, having settled among immigrants who had also been their neighbors in
the ancestral land, needed to clean their name, and a wrong word would incite
the Mnspeople even here. But there is more to this silence: they want me to
" 'You must n o t tell anyone,' m y mother said, 'what I am about to tell you. I n participate in her punishment. And I have. (18)
China your father ha d a sister who killed herself. She j u m p e d into the
family well. We say that y o u r father has all brothers because it is as i f she Now, however, at the m o m e n t o f autobiographical w r i t i n g , Kingston resists
had never been born.' " W i t h that interdiction o f female speech, uttered i n
3 identification w i t h m o t h e r a n d father by breaking the silence, r e t u r n i n g to
the name o f the father, Kingston's mother succinctly elaborates the c i r c u m - the story that marked her entrance into sexual difference "and constituting
stances o f the sister's suicide. T h e concise maternal narrative concludes w i t h her o w n interpretation o f events. She comes to tell another story, seeking to
forceful injunctions and p o w e r f u l maxims inscribing the filial obligations of name the formerly u n n a m e d — t h e subjectivity o f her aunt. As she does so,
daughters i n the patriarchal order: " 'Don'ffet y o u r father know that I told ghe imagines her aunt i n a series o f postures toward that excess o f sexuality
you. H e denies her. N o w that you have started to menstruate, what hap- ^signified by the growth o f h e r womb. Initially dismissing the probability
t
6. 154 A POETICS OF WOMEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior 155
that "people who hatch their own chicks a n d eat embryos and the heads for b i r t h i n the p i g s t y — " t o fool the jealous, pain-dealing gods, who do not
delicacies a n d boil the feet i n vinegar f o r party food, leaving only the gravel, switch piglets" ( 1 6 ) — a n d then by k i l l i n g herself and her c h i l d — " a child
eating even the gizzard l i n i n g — c o u l d . . . engender a prodigal aunt" (7), w i t h no descent line w o u l d not soften her life but only trail after her,
she imagines her aunt the victim o f rape, fearful, silent, and vulnerable ghostlike, begging her to give i t purpose" (17). From one p o i n t o f view,
before her victimizer. B u t she suspends that narrative line, apparently d i s - then, the aunt enacts on her own body and her o w n alternative genealogical
satisfied w i t h its unmitigated emphasis on female powerlessness- and w i l l - . text the punishment o f the tribe, f u l f i l l i n g her filial responsibilities to her
lessness. B e g i n n i n g again, Kingston enters h e r aunt's subjectivity f r o m a n - circle by eliminating the source o f contamination f r o m its center and
other perspective, p r e f e r r i n g to see her as a w i l l f u l w o m a n after "subtle thereby restoring i t to its unbroken configuration. She thus returns/to the
enjoyment." Contemplating this posture, she finds herself increasingly silence that defines her condition and her identity. From another p o i n t o f
aware o f the gaps i n her mother's tale, which motivate her to ask fur ther view, however, the aunt's suicide continues her rebellion i n a congeries o f
questions o f the story a n d to piece together an alternative textual geneal- ways. First, she brings back with her to the center o f her natal circle the
10
ogy. 7
two loci of greatest p o l l u t i o n i n Chinese c u l t u r e — t h e moments o f b i r t h and
Instead o f i m a g i n i n g her aunt as one o f "the heavy, deep-rooted women" d e a t h . Second, by j u m p i n g back into the c i r c l e — t h e family well—-she
11
who "were to maintain the past against the flood, safe for r e t u r n i n g " (9), contaminates, i n a recapitulated gesture o f disruption, the water that l i t e r -
and thus as victim, she imagines her as a w o m a n attuned to "a secret voice, a ally and symbolically promises the continuance o f patrilineal descent and
separate attentiveness" (13), truly transgressive a n d subversive. T h e f r u i t o f the symbolic order i t nourishes. T h i r d , she takes w i t h her the secret of
her w o m b becomes the m a r k exposing the priority o f her desire f o r sex-, paternal origins, never revealing the name o f the father. Saving the father's
uality a n d autobiographical inscription. Indeed, the expansion of her very face, she paradoxically erases the paternal trace, betraying i n yet another
body and o f her sense o f her own authority to define herself ultimately way the fundamental fragility o f undisputed paternal authority. Finally, by
challenges the ontological roots o f her c u l t u r e — " t h e real"; f o r publicized w i t h h o l d i n g f r o m her natal family the name of the offender whose actions
female subjectivity points to the fundamental vulnerability o f the pa- have caused such disgrace, she denies t h e m the means to recover face by
trilineage by exposing i t as a sustained fiction. T h e alternative genealogy
8
enacting their own revenge on the v i o l a t o r . T h u s , while she seems to
12
thus engendered breaks the descent line, subverting the legitimacy o f male capitulate before the monolithic power o f the order against w h i c h she has
succession that determines all lines i n patriarchy—descent lines, property transgressed, Kingston envisions her as a "spite suicide," an antiheroine
lines, and lines o f texts. " T h e frightened villagers, who depended on one
9
whose actions subvert the stability o f an order that rests o n the m o r a l
another to maintain the real," writes Kingston, "went to m y aunt to show imperatives o f filial obligations, i n c l u d i n g sexual repression. H e r very s i -
her a personal, physical representation o f the break she had made i n the lence becomes a p o w e r f u l presence, a female weapon o f vengeance. T o -
'roundness.' Misallying couples snapped off the future, w h i c h was to be ward the end o f this imaginative portrait, Kingston returns once again to
embodied i n true offspring. T h e villagers punished her for acting as i f she her mother's tale by repeating the earlier r e f r a i n : " 'Don't tell anyone you
could have a private life, secret and apart f r o m t h e m " (14). had an aunt. Your father does n o t want to hear her name. She has never
been b o r n ' " (18). Yet while Kingston repeats her mother's words, she does
While her j o u r n e y across the boundaries that circumscribe the p a -
so w i t h a critical difference. U n l i k e her mother, she engenders a story f o r
triarchal order takes the aunt into the u n b o u n d e d spaces o f self-representa-
her aunt, fleshing o u t the narrative and i n c o r p o r a t i n g the subjectivity p r e -
tion, Kingston acknowledges also that this "rare urge west" (9) leads her
viously denied that woman. I n d i v i d u a l i z i n g her mother's cautionary and
into the vast spaces o f alienation, fearfulness, and death. Expelled f r o m the
impersonal tale, she transforms i n the process both her aunt's text a n d her
family circle, her aunt becomes "one o f the stars, a b r i g h t dot i n blackness,
aunt's body f r o m a m a x i m (a mere vessel to h o l d patriarchal signifiers) into
w i t h o u t home, w i t h o u t a companion, i n eternal cold and silence" (16).
a "life." Moreover, she ensures that she herself becomes more t h a n a mere
While the endless n i g h t proposes limitless identities beyond the confining
vessel preserving her mother's maxims, however deeply they may be e m -
borders o f repetitious patriarchal representations, i t promotes the "agora-
bedded i n her consciousness. For the story of this "forerunner," her "urge
phobia" attending any move beyond the carefully prescribed boundaries of
west" and her agoraphobia, becomes a piece i n the puzzle o f her o w n erased
ancestral, familial, and community paradigms o f female self-representa-
and erasable identity: "Unless I see her life branching into mine, she gives
tion. Overwhelmedt>y the vast spaces o f possibility, the aunt returns to the
me no ancestral help" ( t o ) . A n d so, the filiations of her o w n story stretch
genealogical source, reestablishing hef cultural "responsibility" by giving*
t
7. 156 A POETICS-OF WOMEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY ' Maxine Hong Kingston's W o m a n W a r r i o r 157
backward to her aunt's, and the filiations o f her aunt's story stretch forward text; a n d her memories a n d stories may only be fictions too. T h i s maternal
to her own, as the two lives interpenetrate, crossing narrative boundaries i n trace, disruptive o f the patriarchal order, may be potentially as threatening
the text as Kingston interweaves her childhood experiences i n the i m m i - to Kingston as i t was to her aunt. Indeed, she may be the c h i l d — " i t was
grant community encircling her w i t h the imaginative biography o f her probably a girl; there is some hope o f forgiveness f o r boys" (18)-—that her
aunt. aunt takes w i t h her to the grave. Ultimately, the f u l l , the "real" story o f
Kingston retrieves her aunt f r o m the oblivion o f sexuality repressed and w o m a n may lead to madness and to self-destruction rather t h a n to l e g i t i -
textuality erased by placing her i n " a n alternative narrative: the line of mate self-representation.
matrilineal descent to which she traces her origins and t h r o u g h which she
gives voice to her subjectivity. Like her aunt's before her, this transgression Kingston i n the second piece engages another o f her mother's representa-
o f the injunction to filial silence challenges the priority of patrilineal de- ;:| tions o f female autobiography, a story f r o m w h i c h she learned that Chinese
scent. A l l o w i n g her imagination to give voice to the body o f her aunt's text, girls "failed i f we grew u p to be b u t wives and slaves." Here she does not
Kingston expresses i n her o w n way the excess o f narrative (textuality) that distinguish i n quotation marks the words o f her mother; rather, she moves
links her intimately to that earlier excess o f sexuality she identifies i n her ;| directly to her own elaboration o f Fa M u Lan's c h a n t . B u t she goes f u r -
13
aunt. Indeed, her aunt becomes her textual "child," product o f the fictions ther, a p p r o p r i a t i n g n o t only the chant but also the very body o f that l e g e n d -
t h r o u g h w h i c h Kingston gives " b i r t h " to her, and, by the way, to herself. ary w o m a n warrior: T h e identities o f w o m a n w a r r i o r and o f w o m a n n a r r a -
H e r story thus functions as a sign, like her aunt's enlarging belly, publiciz- . ; | :
tor interpenetrate u n t i l biography becomes autobiography, u n t i l Kingston
i n g the potentially disruptive force o f female textuality and the matrilineal and Fa M u L a n are o n e . T h r o u g h this fantasy o f mythic identification, the
1 4
descent o f texts. adult daughter inscribes an autobiography o f "perfect filiality" t h r o u g h
O n the level o f her mother's tale, then, the o r i g i n a t i n g story o f Kingston's . ;j! which she fulfills her mother's expectations and garners her mother's u n -
autobiography testifies to the power o f the patriarchy to command t h r o u g h $ qualified love. Simultaneously, this "life" enables her to escape confinement
mothers the silence o f daughters, to name and to unname them, and in conventional female scripts and to enter the realm o f heroic masculine
thereby to control their m e a n i n g i n discourse itself. O n another level the :| p u r s u i t s — o f education, adventure, public accomplishment, and fame.
opening piece displaces the mother's m y t h w i t h the daughter's, thereby | Ironically, however, Kingston's mythical autobiography betrays the on-
subverting the interpretations on which patrilineal descent and filial r e - tological bases on which that love, power, and compliance w i t h perfect
sponsibilities are predicated and establishing a space i n which female desire filiality rest,
and self-representation can emerge. Yet Kingston concludes w i t h a w o r d of • T h e woman w a r r i o r gains her education beyond the engendered circle of
caution: c o m m u n i t y and family i n a magical, otherworldly place where male and
female difference remains undelineated. H e r educators are a h e r m a p h r o -
My aunt haunts m e — h e r ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of ditic couple beyond childbearing age whose relationship appears to be one
neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her, though not origamied into
o f relative equality; and the education they offer encourages her to forge an
houses and clothes. I do not think she always means me well. I am telling on -i
identity, not t h r o u g h conventional formulations o f woman's selfhood, b u t
her, and she was a spite suicide, drowning herself i n the drinking water. The
t h r o u g h a close identification w i t h the creatures o f nature and the secrets o f
Chinese are always very frightened of the drowned one, whose weeping ghost,
wet hair hanging and skin bloated, waits silently by the water to pull down a natural space. I n such a space female sexuality, signaled by the onslaught
15
substitute. (19) of puberty, remains a " n a t u r a l " event rather t h a n a cultural p h e n o m e n o n
situating the girl i n a constellation of attitudes toward female p o l l u t i o n and
As the final sentence suggests, the identification may not be fortuitous, for contamination. Nonetheless, that education, while i t appears to be l i b e r a t -
autobiographical journeys a n d public self-representations are problematic ing, presupposes Fa M u Lan's total identification w i t h the desires o f her
adventures f o r daughters to pursue. Kingston does n o t yet know her aunt's family, ubiquitously present even i n its absence. For instance, she passively
, name; and the subjectivity she has created f o r her remains only another watches i n the g o u r d as her o w n wedding ceremony takes place despite her
1 interpretation, a fiction. Nor, by implication, can she be sure that she will absence, the choice o f husband entirely her parents' prerogative. U l -
ever know the t r u t h about her own past; Hei^name is never uttered i n the timately, woman can be trained as w a r r i o r only i n a space separate f r o m
3
8. 158 A POETICS OF WOMEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior 159
family; b u t she can enter that space only because her sacrifice to the circle is •- -
'•= tation, they legitimate the very structures m a n creates to define himself,
the basis on which her education takes place at all. Consequently, her em- % including those structures that silence w o m e n . 1 8
powerment does n o t threaten to disrupt the representations o f the pa- , J: T h e heroic figure o f Fa M u L a n thus represents a certain k i n d o f w o m a n
triarchal circle; o n the contrary, i t serves b o t h the family a n d the discourse ,J warrior, a culturally privileged "female avenger." Embedded i n Kingston's
o f gender. % fantasy autobiography, however, lies a truly subversive "story" o f female
W h e n she returns home, Fa M u L a n takes her place, not as "woman," but empowerment. I m a g e d as tiny, foot-bound, squeaky-voiced w o m e n d e p e n -
as extraordinary w o m a n — a s , that is, m a n : " M y parents killed a chicken and dent on male authority for their continued existence, the wives o f w a r r i o r s , '
steamed it whole, as i f they were welcoming home a son" (40). As surrogate. /?' barons, and emperors who h a u n t the interstices o f the textual landscape
son, she replaces her father i n battle, eventually freeing her community are, i n one sense, conventional ghosts. Yet those apparently erased ciphers
f r o m the exploitation a n d terrorization o f the barons. Yet she must do more become, i n another sense, the real female avengers:
than enact the scenario o f male selfhood. She must erase her sexual dif-
ference and publicly represent herself as male, a "female avenger" mas- • ,; Later, it would be said, they turned into the band of swordswomen who were a
querading i n men's clothes and hair styles. A n d while her sexual desire is , mercenary army. They did not wear men's clothes like me, but rode as women
not repressed altogether, as i n the case o f the virginal Joan o f A r c to w h o m in black and red dresses. They bought up girl babies so that many poor families
Kingston alludes, i t must r e m a i n publicly unacknowledged. H i d d e n inside '•% welcomed their visitations. When slave girls and daughters-in-law ran away,
her armor and her tent, h e r "body" remains suppressed i n the larger com- people would say they joined these witch amazons. They killed men and boys. I
n r u n i t y . I t also bears the marks o f her textual and sexual appropriation by
16 ;J| myself never encountered such women and could not vouch for their reality.
(53)
m a n : " N o w when I was naked, I was a strange h u m a n being indeed-—words
. carved on my back and the baby large i n f r o n t " (47). T h e lines o f text on her Such "witch amazons" are figures o f all that is unrepressed a n d violent i n
back are not her own creation: T h e y are the words by which the father has '.' ;| ways b o t h sexual and textual, i n the narrator herself as well as i n the social
inscribed his law on her body, w o u n d i n g her i n the process. A n d her belly is order. Wielding unauthorized power, they do n o t avenge the wrongs o f
f u l l o f a male heir whose b i r t h w i l l ensure the continuance o f the pa- fathers and brothers; they lead daughters against fathers and sons, slaying
trilineage she serves i n her h e r o i s m . Finally, a n d most telling, the n a r r a -
17
the source o f the phallic order i t s e l f . Moreover, they do so, n o t by m a s k -
19
tive's closure asserts the ultimate limitations o f the warrior woman's auto- :•• ing, b u t by aggressively revealing their sexual difference. Paradoxically, Fa
biographical possibilities. Fa M u Lan's story breaks roughly into two parts: :- M u L a n has liberated the women who subvert the order she serves, j u s t as
the narratives o f preparation and public action. I t thus reinscribes the Kingston the n a r r a t o r has released the r u m o r that subverts the story she
traditional structure o f androcentric self-representation, driven by a linear- tells.
causal progression. Once the revenge carved on her back has been enacted, Kingston's memories o f the real, rather t h a n mythical, c h i l d h o o d also
however, b o t h her life as w o m a n w a r r i o r a n d her autobiography end. H a v - subvert the fiction she has created out o f her mother's expectations. J u x -
i n g r e t u r n e d home to unmask herself and to be recuperated as publicly taposing to this autobiography o f androcentric selfhood another self-repre-
silenced wife and slave, she kneels before her parents-in-law: " 'Now my Q sentation that undermines the priority o f the fantasy o f "perfect filiality,"
public duties are finished. . . . I w i l l stay w i t h you, doing f a r m w o r k and .;j Kingston betrays Fa M u Lan's story as a fragile fiction only coterminous
housework, and giving y o u more sons'" (53—54). T h e r e is n o t h i n g more to ,i w i t h the words that inscribe it as m y t h . A n d the j a r r i n g texture o f her
be said by her a n d o f her. recollected e x p e r i e n c e — i t s nervous, disjointed, unpoetic, frustrated
Fa M u Lan's name, u n l i k e the name o f no-name aunt, is passed o n f r o m ||, prose—calls into question the basis f o r the seamless elegance a n d almost
- generation to generation, precisely because the lines o f her story as woman Jf mystical lyricism o f Fa M u Lan's poetic autobiography.
warrior a n d the lines o f her text as w o m a n autobiographer reproduce an :j Kingston recalls the repetition o f commonplace maxims that deny female
androcentric paradigm o f identity and selfhood a n d thereby serve the s y m - significance ("Feeding girls is feeding cowbirds"; " W h e n you raise girls,
bolic order i n "perfect filiality." Since b o t h life and text mask her sexual you're raising children f o r strangers"; "Girls are maggots i n the rice"); the
difference and thereby secure her recuperation i n the phallic order by ** t pressures o f a language that conflates the ideographs representing the
inscribing her subjectivity a n d her selfhood i n the law o f the same represen- * female " I " and "slave"; the images " o f poor people snagging their n e i g h - -
t
9. 160 A POETICS OF WOMEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Maxine Hong Kingston's W o m a n Warrior 161
bors' flotage w i t h l o n g flood hooks and pushing the girl babies o n down the doctor, the scrolls stimulate biography because they announce public
river" (62). A l l these signs and stories o f her culture equate her identity as achievements, a life text readable by culture. T h e y also announce to the
" g i r l " w i t h failed filiality and engender i n her a p r o f o u n d sense o f v u l - daughter another mother, a mythic figure resident i n China who resisted
nerability and lack. T h u s she remembers how she tried to fulfill her filial the erasure o f her own desire and who pursued her own signifying self-
obligations i n the only way imaginable to her: She works at being a "bad" hood. I n her daughter's text, Brave O r c h i d becomes a k i n d o f "woman
g i r l — f o r , as she asks, "Isn't a bad girl almost a boy?" (56). She rejects the warrior," whose story resonates w i t h the Fa M u L a n legend: b o t h wonien
traditional occupations o f femininityV refusing to cook, breaking dishes, leave the circle o f the family to be educated f o r their mission a n d both
screaming impolitely as maxims are mouthed, defiantly telling her parents' r e t u r n to serve their community, freeing i t t h r o u g h many adventures f r o m
friends that she wants to become a lumberjack, b r i n g i n g home straight As, those forces that w o u l d destroy i t . B o t h are fearless, successful, admired.
those signs f r o m another culture o f her extraordinary public achievements. Kingston's biography accretes all varieties o f evidence testifying to her
She adopts, that is, the c u l t u r a l postures o f a "son" by generating signs mother's bravery and extraordinariness. Portrayed as one o f the "new
imitative o f male selfhood. B u t her efforts to be the phallic woman do n o t w o m e n , scientists who changed the rituals" (88), Brave O r c h i d bears the
earn the love and acceptance o f her mother and community, as they do Fa "horizontal name o f one generation" that truly names her rather than the
M u L a n . A n d so her experience gives the lie to that other autobiography: p a t r o n y m signifying woman's identity as cipher silently b o n d i n g the pa-
Everywhere the legend is betrayed as a misleading fiction. 20
trilineage. Thus Kingston's awe-filled n a r r a t i o n o f her mother's c o n f r o n t a -
I n the end, there remains only one residual, locus o f identity between tion w i t h the Sitting Ghost takes on such synecdochic proportions i n the
Kingston and Fa M u L a n : " W h a t we have i n c o m m o n are the words at o u r text: " M y mother may have been afraid, b u t she w o u l d be a dragoness ('my
backs. T h e ideographs for revenge are 'report a crime' and 'report to five totem, y o u r totem'). She could make herself n o t weak. D u r i n g danger she
families.' T h e r e p o r t i n g is the v e n g e a n c e — n o t the beheading, not the g u t - fanned out her dragon claws and riffled her r e d sequin scales and u n f o l d e d
ting, but the words. A n d I have so many w o r d s — ' c h i n k ' words and 'gook' her coiling green stripes. Danger was a good time f o r showing off. L i k e the
words t o o — t h a t they do n o t f i t o n my skin" (63). H e r appropriation o f the dragons living i n temple eaves, m y m o t h e r looked d o w n on p l a i n people
pen, that surrogate sword, and her public inscription o f the story o f her who were lonely and a f r a i d " (79). T h e ensuing battle between w o m a n and
own childhood among ghosts become the r e p o r t i n g o f a c r i m e — t h e crime ghost unfolds as a p r i m a l struggle w i t h the dynamics and the r h y t h m s of an
o f a culture that w o u l d make n o t h i n g o f her by colonizing her and, i n so attempted rape. A physically powerless victim o f the palpably masculine
doing, steal her authority a n d her autobiography f r o m her as her mother's presence who "rolled over h e r and landed bodily on her chest" (81), Brave
legend w o u l d do. I n the tale the forces o f exploitation remain external to O r c h i d is initially unable to challenge his strength. B u t she ultimately p r e -
her family; but i n her own experience they r e m a i n internal, endemic to the vails against the Boulder, defeating h i m w i t h the boldness o f her w o r d and
patriarchal family whose existence is founded o n the colonization and e r a - the power o f the images she voices to taunt h i m into submission a n d cow-
sure o f w o m e n i n service to the selfhood o f men and boys a n d whose ardice. Such fearlessness and verbal c u n n i n g characterize subsequent a d -
perpetuation is secured t h r o u g h the mother's w o r d . By simultaneously e n - ventures the daughter invokes: the coexistence w i t h ghosts and strange
acting and critiquing that legendary story o f female power, Kingston m a n - monsters p o p u l a t i n g the countryside t h r o u g h which she travels o n her way
ages to shatter the complacencies o f cultural myths, problematic heroines, to administer to the sick; the bargain she drives w i t h the slave dealer; her
and the illusory autobiographical possibilities they sanction. By "slaying" response to the b i r t h of monster babies; and her bold orientation toward
the stories o f men and boys and phallic women warriors, she allies herself food. 2 1
w i t h the true female avengers o f her tale. Fa M u L a n may have denied her
Embedded i n the daughter's representation o f her mother's e x t r a o r -
identity w i t h such women; Kingston does not.
dinariness, however, lies another, a palimpsest that tells o f her mother's
preoccupation w i t h autobiographical interpretation. Even m o r e i m p o r t a n t
Whereas the first two narratives explore the consequences o f Kingston's than the story of Brave Orchid's confrontation w i t h the Sitting Ghost is the
. appropriation o f her mother's stories, the t h i r d goes t h r o u g h the stories to re-creation o f her narrative o f the encounter. Skillful i n creating compelling
, the storyteller herself. T h r e e scrolls f r o m China serve as the originating stories o f her experience, Brave O r c h i d makes o f the ghost a vividly
locus o f this biography o f her m o t h e r pieced tdgether w i t h " a u t o b i o g r a p h i - % ominous antagonist, thereby a u t h o r i n g herself as powerful protagonist.
cal" fragments. Texts that legitimate her mother's professional identity as 14 t Such i m a g i n g ensures the emboldening o f her presence i n the eyes a n d
10. 162 A POETICS OF WOMEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Maxine Hong Kingston's W o m a n Warrior 163
imaginations o f the other w o m e n (and o f her daughter): ' " I am brave and woman who embodies the threat o f uncontrolled female sexuality and s u b -
good. Also I have bodily strength and control. Good people do n o t lose to versive alliances between w o m e n — a l w a y s strangers w i t h i n the c o m m u -
ghosts'" (86). Kingston also suggests that her mother secured the same n i t y — a n d the enemy outside.
admiration i n other ways. By studying i n secret, "she quickly built a r e p u t a - A l l these tales f r o m her mother's past, by r e i n f o r c i n g the representation
t i o n f o r being brilliant, a natural scholar who could glance at a book and o f w o m e n as expendable, resonate w i t h Kingston's sense o f displacement i n
know i t " (75). R e t u r n i n g to her village, she "wore a silk robe and western her family and i n the i m m i g r a n t c o m m u n i t y i n America, her confusion
shoes w i t h big heels"; thereafter she maintained that posture by never about her sexuality, and her fears o f her own "deformities" a n d " m a d -
dressing "less elegantly t h a n w h e n she stepped out o f the sedan chair" (go). nesses." T h e y leave h e r with f o o d that suffocates her, a voice tnat/squeaks
By avoiding treatment o f the terminally i l l , she ensured that her powers as on her, and nightmares that h a u n t the l o n g nights o f childhood. T h e y also,
doctor were magnified. I n linguistic and behavioral postures, Brave Orchid^ complicate Kingston's sense o f identification w i t h her m o t h e r by betraying*
orchestrates her public image, inscribes, that is, her own autobiography as' the basis on which her tales o f extraordinariness are founded, that is, the
extraordinary woman. powerlessness o f ordinary w o m e n and children and their cruel and insensi-
T i r e mother's mode o f self-authoring complicates the daughter's effort to y tive victimization, even at the hands o f Brave O r c h i d herself. I n fact, i n her
reconstruct her mother's biography. Brave Orchid's stories about China self-representation Kingston identifies herself w i t h the "lonely and afraid,"
become the only archival material out o f which Kingston can create that ; a victim o f her mother's stories, and thus no true heroine after her mother's
"life"; and yet the stories are already "representations" or "fictions" o f her model. Paradoxically, her mother, the shaman w i t h the power o f w o r d and
experiences before she reaches an America where she is no doctor, where food, has, instead o f inspiring her daughter to health and heroism, made
she works daily washing other people's laundry or picking f r u i t and vegeta- the daughter sick, hungry, vulnerable, fearful.
bles i n the fields, where she is no longer w o m a n alone b u t a wife and I n the closing passage o f this t h i r d narrative, Kingston re-creates her
mother, where she is no w o m a n w a r r i o r dressed elegantly i n silk. "You have__ most recent encounter w i t h her m o t h e r and, t h r o u g h i t , her c o n t i n u i n g
no idea how m u c h I have fallen" (90), she confesses and therein suggests" resistance to her mother's victimizing presence. Ironically, the scene r e -
the efficacy o f stories a n d storytelling as means to preserve her extraor- capitulates the earlier scene o f her mother's biography. T h e dark bedroom,
dinariness. Significantly, the dynamics o f the mother's fate recall those o f Fa the late h o u r recall the haunted r o o m at the medical school. H e r e Brave
M u Lan's: Adventures concluded, b o t h r e t u r n to the home o f the husband O r c h i d is herself the ghost who w o u l d continue to h a u n t her daughter: " M y
as wife a n d slave, there to become the subject o f w o n d e r f u l tales o f an mother w o u l d sometimes be a large animal, barely real i n the dark; then she
earlier glory i n a faraway place. w o u l d become a m o t h e r again" (118). Like Brave O r c h i d before her, K i n g -
Kingston's narrative, as i t interpenetrates her autobiography w i t h her ston grasps the only weapon effective i n overcoming that ghost-—-the words
mother's biography, reveals how problematic such stories can become for ..." w i t h which she resists her. I n the syncopated r h y t h m o f statement and
the next generation. F r o m one point o f view, they can be exhilarating, $j rebuttal, she answers her mother's vision o f things w i t h her own, c h a l l e n g -
creating i n children the admiration that is so apparent i n Kingston's text. i n g unremittingly the power o f her m o t h e r to control interpretations. She
B u t f r o m another, they generate confusions and ambiguities, since as a 7j| also offers an alternative representation o f her mother i n this closing scene,
child Kingston inflected the narratives w i t h her o w n subjectivity, attending ^ p o r t r a y i n g her as an old woman, tired, prosaic, lonely, a w o m a n whose
to another story w i t h i n the text o f female heroism. For Brave Orchid's tales illusions o f r e t u r n i n g to China have vanished, whose stories have become
o f bravery and exoticism are u n d e r w r i t t e n by an alternative text o f female peevish, repetitious. I n creating a p o r t r a i t o f her mother as neither fearless
vulnerability and victimization. T h e story elaborating the purchase o f the nor exotic, the daughter demystifies Brave Orchid's presence and diffuses
slave girl reaffirms the servile status o f w o m e n and actually gives legitimacy ; j | the power o f her w o r d .
to Kingston's fears her parents w i l l sell h e r when they r e t u r n to China. The For all the apparent rejection o f her mother as ghost, the final passage
stories o f babies identify femaleness w i t h deformity and suggest to the points to a locus o f identification between mother and daughter and a
daughter the h a u n t i n g possibility that her m o t h e r m i g h t actually have p r a c - momentary rapprochement between the two. I n saying goodnight, K i n g -
ticed female infanticide. T h e story o f the crazy lady, scurrying directionless Z ston's mother calls her Little D o g , a name o f endearment u n u t t e r e d f o r
on b o u n d feet, encased i n the mirror-zstudded headdress, caught i n her own many years, and, i n that gesture o f affection, releases her daughter to be
self-destructive capitulations, dramatizes communal fear o f the anomalous" who she will, As a result, Kingston experiences the freedom to identify w i t h
11. 164 A POETICS OF WOMEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Maxine Hong Kingston's W o m a n W a r r i o r 165
her; for, as the daughter makes evident i n her biography, her m o t h e r b e - house, describing what they do, repeating what they say, asking what their
fore her had strayed f r o m filial obligations, leaving her parents behind i n words mean. While there is something delightfully childlike, curious, and
pursuit o f her o w n desire; " I a m really a Dragon, as she is a Dragon, both o f naive about that n a r r a t i o n o f other people's lives, there is a more p r o f o u n d
us b o r n i n dragon years. I a m practically a first daughter o f a first daughter" sadness that a w o m a n in. h e r sixties, u n f o r m e d and infantile, has n o a u t o -
(127). A t this m o m e n t o f closure, Kingston affectionately traces her geneal- biography o f her own.
ogy as w o m a n and w r i t e r to a n d t h r o u g h her m o t h e r i n a sincere gesture o f W h e n her husband rejects her, giving his allegiance to his Chinese-Amer-
filiality, acknowledging as she does 'so that her autobiography cannot be ican wife, who can speak English and aid h i m i n his w o r k , he denies the very
inscribed outside the biography of her mother, j u s t as the biography of her ontological basis on which M o o n Orchid's selfhood is predicated a n d e f -
mother cannot be inscribed outside her own interpretations. M o t h e r and fectually erases her f r o m the lines o f descent. H e also undermines w i t h his
daughter are allied i n the interpenetration o f stories and storytelling, an negation o f her role what autobiographical representations she has m a n -
alliance captured i n the ambiguous reference o f the final sentence: "She aged to create f o r herself. " 'You became people i n a book I read a l o n g time
sends me o n my way, w o r k i n g always and now old, dreaming the dreams ago'" (179), he tells the two sisters, dramatically betraying the elusiveness o f
about s h r i n k i n g babies and the sky covered w i t h airplanes and a Chinatown the "fictions" on which M o o n O r c h i d has sustained her identity as first wife.
bigger than the ones here" (127). As the motifs-of the final pages suggest, Once having been t u r n e d into a fairy-tale figure f r o m a time l o n g past, this
b o t h mother and daughter are w o r k i n g always a n d now old. w o m a n loses the core o f her subjectivity and literally begins to vanish: She
appears "small i n the corner o f the seat" (174); she stops speaking because
I n the f o u r t h narrative Kingston does not take the w o r d o f her m o t h e r as the grounds for her authority to speak have been u n d e r m i n e d — " A l l she
her. point o f narrative o r i g i n . She w i l l reveal at the inception o f the next d i d was open and shut h e r m o u t h w i t h o u t any words c o m i n g o u t " (176);
piece that the only i n f o r m a t i o n she received about the events narrated i n later she stops eating, r e t u r n i n g to Brave Orchid's home "shrunken to the
the f o u r t h piece came f r o m her brother t h r o u g h her sister i n the f o r m o f an bone." Ultimately, she vanishes into a w o r l d o f madness where she creates
abrupt, spare bone o f a story: "What m y brother actually said was, ' I drove repetitious fictions, variations on a story about vanishing w i t h o u t a trace.
M o m and Second A u n t to Los Angeles to see Aunt's husband who's got the T h u s she fantasizes that Mexican "ghosts" are p l o t t i n g to snatch her life
other w i f e ' " (189). O u t o f a single factual sentence, Kingston creates a f r o m her, that " 'they' w o u l d take us i n airplanes and fly us to Washington,
complex story o f the two sisters, Brave O r c h i d and M o o n O r c hid. She D.C., where they'd t u r n us into ashes. . . . d r o p the ashes i n the w i n d ,
admits that "his version o f the story may be better t h a n mine because o f its leaving no evidence" (184). T h e tenuousness, evanescence, and elusiveness
bareness, n o t twisted into designs" (189); b u t the "designs" to which.she o f identity press o n her so that everywhere she sees signs (sees, that is,
alludes have become integral to her autobiographical interpretations. evidence o f the legitimacy o f her o w n interpretations) that alien males
threaten to erase her f r o m the w o r l d , leaving n o trace o f her body as her
I n Kingston's designs M o o n O r c h i d , like Brave O r c h i d i n "Shaman,"
husband has left no trace o f her patrilineal existence. T o protect herself she
embodies h e r name: She is a flower o f the m o o n , a decorative satellite that
withdraws into the "house" o f her sister, that edifice that has supported her
revolves a r o u n d and takes its definition f r o m another body, the absent
construction o f an identity as first wife. T h e r e she literally makes o f the
husband. M u t e to her own desire, attendant always on the w o r d o f her
house what i t has always been m e t a p h o r i c a l l y — a l i v i n g coffin—-windows
husband, she represents the traditional Chinese wife, a woman without
shut and darkened, "no air, no light," a n d she makes o f storytelling itself a
autobiographical possibilities. "For thirty years," comments her niece, "she
l i v i n g coffin. As Brave O r c h i d tells her children, " 'The difference between
had been receiving money f r o m h i m f r o m America. B u t she had never told
m a d people and sane people . . . is that sane people have variety w h e n they
h i m that she wanted to come to the U n i t e d States. She waited f o r h i m to
talk-story. M a d people have only one story that they talk over a n d over'"
suggest i t , b u t he never d i d " (144). Unlike Brave Orchid, she is neithei
(184). Only after Brave O r c h i d commits her to a mental institution does she
clever n o r shrewd, skilled n o r quick, sturdy n o r lasting. Demure, self-effac-
find a new fiction to replace the o l d one, a renewed identity as " m o t h e r " to
i n g , decorative, tidy, r e f i n e d — s h e is as gracefully useless and as elegandy
the other women ("daughters") who can never vanish. I n the end the story
civilized as b o u n d feet, as decoratively insubstantial as the paper cutouts she
o f vanishing w i t h o u t leaving a trace becomes the only trace that is left o f
brings her nieces and nephews f r o m the old country. H a v i n g little subjec-
h e r , an impoverished autobiographical absence.
tivity o f her own, she can only appropriate 3s her own the subjectivity o)
t
others, spending her days f o l l o w i n g nieces a n d nephews t h r o u g h the 4 / H e r mother Kingston now represents, n o t as the "new w o m a n " o f "Sha-
12. 166 A POETICS OF WOMEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Maxine Hung Kingston's W o m a n Warrior 167
man," but as a traditional w o m a n intent o n preserving her family f r o m unlike M o o n O r c h i d , she is willful, h a r d w o r k i n g , clever, intelligent, shrewd,
h a r m by maintaining the o l d traditions against the erosions o f A m e r i c a n stubborn, "brave"-—all those qualities that have enabled her to cope w i t h
culture. T h r o u g h the conventions o f speaking (Chinese), eating, greeting, and to survive i n her translation to another cultural landscape. Moreover,
chanting, storytelling, she keeps China drawn a r o u n d her family i n a l i n - she can always fabricate another story, as she does when she urges her
guistic and gustatory circle. M o r e particularly, she seeks to preserve the old children to sabotage any plans her husband, now i n his seventies, m i g h t
family constellation and, w i t h it, the identity o f woman. Thus, f r o m Brave have to marry a second wife. Nonetheless, other women are victimized by
Orchid's "Chinese" perspective, her sister is a first wife, entitled to certain her words, their autobiographical possibilities cut off.
privileges and rights, even i n A m e r i c a Yet, i n her allegiance to the old T h r o u g h the "designs" i n "At the Western Palace," Kingston confronts
traditions o f filial and affinal obligations, Brave O r c h i d becomes s h o r t - explicitly the problematics o f autobiographical "fictions." B o t h M o o n O r -
sighted, insensitive, and destructive. She succeeds only i n m a k i n g other chid and Brave O r c h i d serve as powerful negative models f o r the perils o f
women (her niece, who remains trapped i n a loveless marriage; her sister, autobiography. M o o n O r c h i d , bereft o f the husband who defines her place
who dies i n a mental institution) unhappy, sick, even mad; a n d she does so a n d who sets the limits o f her subjectivity w i t h i n the structures o f the
because, failing to anticipate j u s t how misplaced the traditions and myths patrilineage, succumbs to an imagination anchored i n no-place, an i m a g -
have become i n the new w o r l d , she trusts her w o r d too well. T h e stories she inative rootlessness threatening Kingston herself. Overwhelmed by r e -
tells create illusions that fail o f reference to any reality. petitious fantasies, her aunt vanishes into a w o r l d where alien males c o n -
T h e story o f the Empress o f tire Western Palace is a case i n p o i n t . " 'A l o n g tinually plot to erase her f r o m existence, a preoccupation that resonates
time ago,'" Brave O r c h i d tells her sister o n the drive to Los Angeles, w i t h Kingston's chi l dhood fears o f leaving no culturally significant a u t o -
biographical trace. A woman o f no autobiography, M o o n O r c h i d cannot
"the emperors had f o u r wives, one at each p o i n t o f the compass, a nd they lived find a voice o f her own, or, rather, the only subjectivity that she finally
i n f o u r palaces. T h e Empress o f the West w o u l d connive f o r power, b u t the voices is the subjectivity o f madness. Brave O r c h i d , too, serves as a p o w e r f u l
Empress o f the East was g o o d a n d k i n d a nd f u l l o f light. You are the Empress negative model. She w o u l d write a certain biography o f her sister, patterned
o f the East, a n d the Empress o f t h e West has i m p r i s o n e d the Earth's E m p e r o r after traditional interpretations of the identity of a first wife. I n preserving
i n the Western Palace. A n d y o u , the good Empress o f t h e East, come o u t o f the her interpretations, however, she victimizes other w o m e n by failing to make
d a w n to invade her l a n d a n d free the E m p e r o r . You must break the s t r o n g spell a space i n her story f o r female subjectivity i n unfamiliar landscapes, by
she has cast o n h i m that has lost h i m the East." (166)
r e m a i n i n g insensitive to her sister's fears and desires, as she remains i n s e n -
sitive to her daughter's desires. Giving her unquestioning allegiance to
T h e m y t h , however, is an inappropriate text t h r o u g h which to interpret
language, she fails to recognize the danger i n words, the perils inherent i n
M o o n Orchid's experience. T h e Empress o f the West is not conniving; the
the fictions that b i n d .
E m p ero r does not wa nt freeing; and the Empress o f the East cannot break
the spell. Moreover, f o r all Brave Orchid's forceful narratives o f the p r o - I n the end Kingston, too, has created only a fiction, an elaborate story out
jected meeting a m o n g M o o n O r c h i d , the husband, and the second wife, the of the one sentence passed by her brother t h r o u g h her sister; a n d she, too,
actual scene is pitifully humorous, squeezed as i t is i n the backseat o f the must beware the danger in-words as she constructs her stories o f those other
car. ' " W h a t scenes I could make'" (146), she tells her sister; b u t the only women, more particularly her mother. T o a certain extent she seems to do
scenes she makes are i n her fantasies o f t h e m (and her daughter the story- so i n this f o u r t h narrative. For all the negative, even h o r r i f y i n g , aspects o f
teller is the one w h o actually makes the scene). T h o u g h she is not entirely Brave Orchid's fierce preservation and M o o n Orchid's repetitious fantasies,
speechless when they confront M o o n Orchid's husband, she is obviously both women come across i n this section as fully h u m a n . H e r mother, es-
awed by the wealthy, successful, a n d m u c h younger man, and by the p r e s - pecially, does so; and that is because, releasing her m o t h e r to be her own
sure o f his young, efficient wife. Kingston creates a Brave O r c h i d bested i n character, under her own name "Brave O r c h i d , " rather than as "my m o t h -
the game o f fictionalizations. T h e husband has t u r n e d the two sisters into er," the daughter penetrates her mother's subjectivity w i t h tender ironies
characters f r o m a book read l o n g ago, a devastating recapitulation o f their, and gentle mercies. I n d o i n g so, she effaces her own presence i n the text as
efforts to t u r n h i m into the fictional Emperor. While the power of her character, her presence i m p l i e d only i n the reference to Brave Orchid's
myths to help define a n d situate identities has been eroded by another "children." U n l i k e her mother, then, who does not imagine the contours o f
cultural tradition, Brave O r c h i d herself has n o t been destroyed because, her sister's subjectivity, Kingston here tries to t h i n k like her mother a n d her
t
13. 168 A POETICS OF WOMEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Maxine Hong Kingston's W o m a n W a r r i o r 169
aunt. Yet even as she creates the fullness of her m o t h e r out of her w o r d , she ston remembers yelling at her. " 'You are a plant. Do you know that? That's
recognizes the very fictionality o f her t a l e — i t s "designs" that serve her own all y o u are i f you don't talk. I f you don't talk, you can't have a personality.
hermeneutical purposes. She, too, like her mother w i t h i n her story, n e g o t i - You'll have no personality a n d no hair. You've got to let people know you
ates the w o r l d by means o f the fictions that sustain interpretations a n d have a personality a n d a p r a m . You think somebody is going to take care o f
preserve identities. I n the persistent reciprocities that characterize K i n g - you all your stupid life?'""(210).
ston's storytelling, her m o t h e r becomes the product o f her fictions, as she Yet, while the girl stands m u t e before the screaming Kingston, they bo'th
has been the product o f her mother's. weep profusely, w i p i n g their snot o n their sleeves as the seemingly frozen
scene wraps them b o t h in'its embrace. Kingston remembers feeling some
Kingston represents i n the final piece, "A Song f o r a Barbarian Reed Pipe," comfort i n establishing her difference f r o m the girl, taking p r i d e i n her
her adolescent struggle to discover her own speaking voice a n d a u t o b i o - dirty fingernails, calloused hands, yellow teeth, her desire to wear black.
graphical authority. This drama originates i n the m e m o r y o f her mother's B u t the fierceness w i t h w h i c h she articulates her desire for difference only
literally cutting the voice o u t o f her: "She pushed m y tongue u p and sliced accentuates her actual identity w i t h the nameless g i r l : B o t h are the last ones
the f r e n u m . O r maybe she snipped i t w i t h a pair o f nail scissors. I don't chosen by teams; both are silent and " d u m b " i n the American school. A n
remember her d o i n g it, only her telling me about it, b u t all d u r i n g childhood exaggerated representation o f the perfect Chinese girl, this girl becomes a
I felt sorry f o r the baby whose m o t h e r waited w i t h scissors or knife i n h a n d m i r r o r image o f Kingston herself, reflecting her own fears o f insubstan-
for i t to c r y — a n d then, whe n its m o u t h was wide open like a baby bird's, cut" tiality and dumbness (symbolized for her i n the zero intelligence quotient
( i g o ) . Notably, Kingston remembers, n o t the actual event, but the r e c o n - that marks her first-grade record). I n the p u l l i n g o f the hair, the p o k i n g o f
struction o f the event i n language, a phenomenon testifying to the power of the flesh, Kingston captures the violence o f her childhood insecurity and
the mother's w o r d to constitute the daughter's history, i n this case her self-hatred. Striking the Chinese-American girl, she strikes violently at her
continuing sense o f confusion, horror, deprivation, and violation. H e r own failure to take a voice a n d at all her mother's p r i o r narratives o f female
mother passes on a tale o f female castration, a rite o f passage analogous to a voicelessness. Tellingly, her aggressive attack o n that m i r r o r image e v e n t u -
clitoridectomy, that w o u n d i n g o f the female body i n service to the c o m m u - ates, n o t i n the girl's utterance o f her name, but i n Kingston's eighteen-
nity, p e r f o r m e d and thereby perpetuated by the m o t h e r . I t is a ritual that
22
m o n t h illness, which ensures that she indeed does become like the other
results i n the denial to woman o f the pleasure o f giving voice to her body and girl. Confined to bed, isolated inside the house, she is literally silenced i n
body to her voice, the pleasure o f autobiographical legitimacy a n d authority. the public space, a fragile a n d useless girl. Attended always by her family,
she too becomes a plant, a n o t h i n g . Ironically, she says o f that time: " I t was
I n her re-creation of the confrontation w i t h the Chinese-American girl i n
the best year and a h a l f o f m y life. N o t h i n g happened" (212). T h e a d m i s -
the bathroom o f the Chinese school, Kingston evokes her childhood c o n f u -
sion betrays the tremendous relief o f n o t h a v i n g to prove to people she has
sion about speechlessness: "Most o f us," she comments, "eventually f o u n d
"a personality and a b r a i n , " the powerful enticement o f succumbing to the
some voice, however faltering. We invented an American-feminine speak-
implications of her mother's narratives and her culture's maxims, the c o n -
i n g personality, except f o r t h a t one girl who could n o t speak up even i n
fusing attractiveness o f not having to find a public voice, of n o t sti-uggling
Chinese school" (200). A k i n d o f surrogate home, the Chinese school
w i t h shame.
functions as the repository o f old traditions and conventional identities
within the i m m i g r a n t c o m m u n i t y ; and the bathroom is that most private of For, as her narrative recollection reveals, taking a voice becomes c o m p l i -
female spaces—only for girls, only f o r certain activities, which, as i t locates cated by her sense o f guilt. She is ashamed to speak i n public w i t h a voice
the elimination o f matter f r o m the body, ultimately becomes associated w i t h like those o f the i m m i g r a n t w o m e n — l o u d , inelegant, unsubtle. She is
female p o l l u t i o n and shame. I n that space, Kingston responds cruelly, even ashamed to speak the words her mother demands she say to the druggist
violently, t o the female image before her, a b h o r r i n g the girl's useless f r a g i l - ghost because she considers her mother's words, as they exact compliance
ity: her neat, pastel clothes; h e r China-doll haircut; her tiny, white teeth; w i t h traditional beliefs, to be outdated. She is ashamed to keep the same
her baby-soft, fleshy s k i n — " l i k e squid out o f w h i c h the glassy blades of k i n d o f silences and secrets her m o t h e r w o u l d keep because such secrets
bones had been pulled," "like tracing paper/onion paper" (206). Most o f all, command her duplicity before the teachers she respects...For all these r e a -
she abhors her "dumbness," f o r this girl, who cannot even speak her name sons she w o u l d n o t speak like her m o t h e r (and Chinese women) i n her
aloud, is ultimately w i t h o u t body or text. " 'You're such a n o t h i n g , ' " K i n g - Arrterican environment; but her own efforts to take the appropriate A m e r i -
t
14. 170 A POETICS OF WOMEN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY Maxine Hong Kingston's W o m a n Warrior 171
can-feminine voice fail, and that failure too gives her cause f o r shame. I n m o t h e r cuts her tongue by refusing to acknowledge the daughter's stories
public her voice becomes "a crippled animal r u n n i n g on broken legs" (196), as legitimate: " ' I can't stand this whispering,' she said l o o k i n g r i g h t at me,
a duck voice; her throat "cut[s]" off the w o r d ; her m o u t h appears " p e r m a - stopping her squeezing. 'Senseless gabbings every night. I wish you w o u l d
nently crooked w i t h effort, t u r n e d down o n the left side and straight on the stop. Go away and work. Whispering, whispering, m a k i n g no sense. M a d -
r i g h t " (199). H e r face a n d vocal chords continue to show the signs o f her ness. I don't feel like, hearing your craziness'" (233). I n response, Kingston
p r i o r castration, the physical m u t i l a t i o n a n d discomfort that m a r k her r e l a - swallows her words, b u t only temporarily. T h e tautness o f her vocal cords
tionship to language and to anv_public enunciation o f subjectivity. increasing to a breaking point, she later bursts the silence, u t t e r i n g i n a
T h e landscape o f her childhoo'd, as she reconstructs it, reveals the u n d e r - cathartic m o m e n t the text o f her inner life before her mother. Finally, this
l y i n g logic i n Kingston's failure to overcome her symbolic disability. Seeing girl takes o f voice, albeit i n great confusion, and thereby authors a vision,
a r o u n d her the h u m i l i a t i n g representations o f woman, hearing words such^ textualizes her subjectivity, a n d legitimizes her own desires. She embarks,
as "maggots" become.synonyms for "girls," suspecting that her mother that is, on the autobiographical enterprise, articulating her interpretations
seeks to contract her o u t as the wife and slave o f some young m a n , perhaps against her mother's.
even the retarded boy w h o follows her a r o u n d w i t h his box f u l l o f p o r - I n this battle o f words, mother and daughter, products o f different
nographic pictures, she negotiates a nightmare o f female victimization by cultural experiences, systems o f signs, and modes o f interpretation, speak
adopting the postures o f an unattractive girl, the better to foil her mother's _ two different "languages" and inscribe two different stories—graphically
efforts and to forestall h e r weary capitulation. Cultivating that autobio- ^ imaged i n the sets o f quotation marks that delimit their separate visions and
graphical signature, she represents herself publicly as the obverse o f her <f betray the gap i n the matrilineage as the circle of identity, o f place and
mother's image o f the charming, attractive, practical young girl by becom- ;|; desire, is disrupted. Unable to understand the mother, u n w i l l i n g to identify
i n g clumsy, vulgar, bad-tempered, lazy, impractical, irreverent, and stupid i | w i t h her, the daughter woul d, i n ironic reciprocity, cut off her mother's
" f r o m reading too m u c h " (226). She becomes, that is, a k i n d o f fiction; and |j : w o r d : " ' I don't want to listen to any more o f your stories; they have no
the psychic price she pays f o r orchestrating such a public posture is high. logic. T h e y scramble me up, You lie w i t h stories. You won't tell me a story and
Publicly appearing as the " d u m b " and awkward girl, she does n o t earn the ;?| then say, T h i s is a true story,' o r 'This is j u s t a story'" (235). B u t her mother's
affection and respect o f her family and community. Moreover, she must ;g reluctant a d m i s s i o n — " 'We like to say the opposite'" (237)—forces Kingston
convince herself o f the reality o f her m i n d by constantly attending to the j f to question, at the m o m e n t o f their origin, h e r own interpretations and thus
grades she earns i n the A m e r i c a n school, those signs, unrecognized i n her the " t r u t h " or "fictiveness" o f the autobiography she w o u l d inscribe t h r o u g h
Chinese culture, that signal her access to other discourses. She remains j | > her memories o f the past. As a result, the y o u n g Kingston comes to recognize
" d u m b " i n another sense, f o r she recognizes even i n childhood that "talking ; the relativity o f t r u t h , the very elusiveness o f self-representation that drives
and not talking made the difference between sanity and insanity," i n that ?fg the autobiographical enterprise. " H o C h i K u a i " her m o t h e r calls her; and,
"insane people were the ones who couldn't explain themselves" (216). Since ;|g ; even to the m o m e n t i n her adult life when she writes her autobiography, she
she cannot give voice to her subjectivity except by indirection and dis- ; | | cannot specify, can only guess, the meaning o f the name her m o t h e r gaveher
simulation, externalizing i n an awkward masquerade the text o f publicly • jgf f r o m that culture she w o u l d leave behind. I n the end she can only try to
unexpressed desires, she finds commonality w i t h the anomalous women decipher the meaning o f her past, her subjectivity, her desire, her own name:
such as Pee-A-Nah a n d Crazy Mary, who retreat into imaginary worlds, % J | " I continue to sort out what's j u s t my childhood, j u s t my imagination, j u s t my
there to haunt the outskirts o f the i m m i g r a n t community and the imagina- * | ; family, j u s t the village, j u s t movies, j u s t l i v i n g " (239).
tions o f its children. M
T h e culmination o f this struggle w i t h voice comes when Kingston finally W Kingston closes The Woman Warrior w i t h a coda, r e t u r n i n g i t to silence after
attempts to "explain" her silenced guilts, the text o f which lengthens daily, . | | telling two brief stories, one her mother's, one hers. She starts w i t h the
and to represent her repressed desires to her mother, believing that by : r | former: "Here is a story my mother told me, n o t when I was young, b u t
d o i n g so she will establish some grounds f o r identification a n d overcome :|^ recently, when I told her I also talk-story. T h e beginning is hers, the ending,
h e r p r o f o u n d isolation a n d dumbness: " I f only I could let my m o t h e r know , | | mine" (240). Notably, her mother's story is now a gift. Passed f r o m one
the list, s h e — a n d the w o r l d — w o u l d ' become more like me, and I would ; || : ; storyteller to another, i t signals the mother's genuine identification w i t h the
never be alone again" (230). Recapitulating the earlier castration, h e r ^ daughter. Yet the two-part story also functions as a testament to difference,