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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
Um. So I thought this was going to be a Mulan retelling, but it's actually a book of memoirs! It's about a girl whose mother came to America from China and I think the timing sort of works out so the author is closer to my grandparents' age than my parents' age, which threw me off for a bit because I haven't read many immigrant stories from one generation earlier.
I guess before reading this I’d never really given this sort of thought to the experience of being Chinese American and a woman. I wouldn’t have understood it. I read Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter when I was pretty young, and Mom was always after me to watch Joy Luck Club with her, and I read Adeline Yen Mah’s autobiography, and those are all about Chinese American women. But the fabrics and textures of Maxine Hong Kingston’s work are so much richer and more vivid than anything I can remember reading before. It might have to do with having taken a class on modern China, which gave me a completely new take on being a woman in rural China. Basically? It sucks. Beyond all comprehensible belief. I always heard from Mom that 婆婆 had a crappy life, and then there were the two ghosts of the women from the village, forced into marriages they didn’t want…
It’s also interesting to be reading this alongside Andrea Louie’s Chineseness across Borders (2004), which is all about what’s called roots tourism, heritage tourism, or genealogy tourism. And to be exploring these just as I head into an internship at the Chinese American Museum. I’m excited to start exploring whatever I’m going to be exploring. I don’t know what it is I’ll find out – if the biggest things to learn will be about me, or about museums, or about art, or about the Chinese American community that I have for so long seemed to shy away from. But it begins soon.
Wow. Wikipedia reports that the Modern Language Association has said this is the most commonly taught book in universities – it’s used in “American literature, anthropology, Asian studies, composition, education, psychology, sociology, and women’s studies.” It’s interesting to see the sort of reviews she’s gotten, just from this overview: There are critics who say she’s sold out her people, critics who say she’s misrepresenting Chinese Americans… It’s a little silly to say these things – clearly this work is just one, highly fictionalized, representation of an individual’s life, and so how can you say you’re misrepresenting Chinese Americans as a whole? Any representation is bound to be off, no? Even a representation of yourself can never be what you might mean it to be. As for selling out your people to get better reception from “whites” or other audiences… Perhaps this isn’t the answer, but I’m reminded of Gloria Anzaldúa: “Not me sold out my people but they me” (21). A different context, a different individual, and by no means a good fit… yet entrenched in some similar ideas about gender and social hierarchies, and who is supposed to bear what burdens.
Time to read Kingston’s 1982 essay, “Cultural Mis-readings by American Reviewers.” I’ll let you know how it goes, once I’ve finished Ethington’s essay on Simmel and social distance. Oh, and time to watch something called Americanese (2009).
Oh, actually, I’ve just added this to the reading list: Yung Wing’s My Life in China and America (1909). This guy was seriously cool – first Chinese graduate from an American university (Yale, 1854), also helped bulk up the Chinese military through all these deals with American companies, pushed for reform in China when all hell was breaking loose, and only used his Cantonese name.
June 16, 2012: So I’ve just finished my first week of work at the museum, and I have to say I don’t know very much what I’m still trying to understand. I’m not even so clear on what I’m trying to ask, I don’t think… Is it that there’s some part of me that, when I read these works, I’m trying to learn something about who I am, or what my culture was/is/should be like? And the possessive “my” is questionable anyway. But why do I even feel that need to explore what that is? I’ve talked to other people who don’t feel that same curiosity/tie to their ethnic backgrounds – other Cantonese Americans, too. I don’t know how to express it. Maybe things don’t make sense until they’re put into words – the imagination is stronger than reality, no? Like reading the fictional journal of the plague, versus reading an actual journal – the fiction is so much more powerful, though it shouldn’t be.
It’s also interesting to be reading this alongside Andrea Louie’s Chineseness across Borders (2004), which is all about what’s called roots tourism, heritage tourism, or genealogy tourism. And to be exploring these just as I head into an internship at the Chinese American Museum. I’m excited to start exploring whatever I’m going to be exploring. I don’t know what it is I’ll find out – if the biggest things to learn will be about me, or about museums, or about art, or about the Chinese American community that I have for so long seemed to shy away from. But it begins soon.
Wow. Wikipedia reports that the Modern Language Association has said this is the most commonly taught book in universities – it’s used in “American literature, anthropology, Asian studies, composition, education, psychology, sociology, and women’s studies.” It’s interesting to see the sort of reviews she’s gotten, just from this overview: There are critics who say she’s sold out her people, critics who say she’s misrepresenting Chinese Americans… It’s a little silly to say these things – clearly this work is just one, highly fictionalized, representation of an individual’s life, and so how can you say you’re misrepresenting Chinese Americans as a whole? Any representation is bound to be off, no? Even a representation of yourself can never be what you might mean it to be. As for selling out your people to get better reception from “whites” or other audiences… Perhaps this isn’t the answer, but I’m reminded of Gloria Anzaldúa: “Not me sold out my people but they me” (21). A different context, a different individual, and by no means a good fit… yet entrenched in some similar ideas about gender and social hierarchies, and who is supposed to bear what burdens.
Time to read Kingston’s 1982 essay, “Cultural Mis-readings by American Reviewers.” I’ll let you know how it goes, once I’ve finished Ethington’s essay on Simmel and social distance. Oh, and time to watch something called Americanese (2009).
Oh, actually, I’ve just added this to the reading list: Yung Wing’s My Life in China and America (1909). This guy was seriously cool – first Chinese graduate from an American university (Yale, 1854), also helped bulk up the Chinese military through all these deals with American companies, pushed for reform in China when all hell was breaking loose, and only used his Cantonese name.
June 16, 2012: So I’ve just finished my first week of work at the museum, and I have to say I don’t know very much what I’m still trying to understand. I’m not even so clear on what I’m trying to ask, I don’t think… Is it that there’s some part of me that, when I read these works, I’m trying to learn something about who I am, or what my culture was/is/should be like? And the possessive “my” is questionable anyway. But why do I even feel that need to explore what that is? I’ve talked to other people who don’t feel that same curiosity/tie to their ethnic backgrounds – other Cantonese Americans, too. I don’t know how to express it. Maybe things don’t make sense until they’re put into words – the imagination is stronger than reality, no? Like reading the fictional journal of the plague, versus reading an actual journal – the fiction is so much more powerful, though it shouldn’t be.
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Absolutely gorgeous. I read [b:The Woman Warrior|30852|The Woman Warrior|Maxine Hong Kingston|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1418654290s/30852.jpg|1759] for my Modern American Fiction class and I'm so glad it was on the syllabus.
This book is simultaneously an art object (each word is perfect) and also an incredible story (or set of stories, more accurately). The language is poetic and intricate, rich with imagery that somehow can be both lovely and deeply disturbing. Some scenes were physically painful to read because of how realistically she rendered them.
It's a great book. Read it :)
This book is simultaneously an art object (each word is perfect) and also an incredible story (or set of stories, more accurately). The language is poetic and intricate, rich with imagery that somehow can be both lovely and deeply disturbing. Some scenes were physically painful to read because of how realistically she rendered them.
It's a great book. Read it :)
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston was a book I had to read for my Anglo-American Lit. course, and it was probably the one I enjoyed the most because I love Asian heroines.
The title itself suggests the idea of this book: a woman can be a woman but she can also be a warrior, in the sense that she is self-empowered and independent. The point is not be a warrior and "change" gender, it's embracing being a woman BUT also be the heroine of your own story.
I would not label this book a novel because it isn't, but it's not an autobiography either. The fascinating thing about TWW is that is a mix of reality and fantasy, of past and present, truth and lies, and it's engaging because you always wonder where the truth lies (pun intended).
It is divided in five sections, each filled with references and legends that strengthen the significance of the whole idea of the book.
The first section, No Name Woman, begins with the protagonist/writer's mother telling her not to speak about the story she's about to reveal to her. This is important, because the whole book is about keeping silent and be a respectful Chinese woman who only talks when necessary. In Brave Orchid's mind, she knows she shouldn't speak but maybe now that she isn't in China her control wavers, and she uses the first talking-story as a cautionary tale, as a way to warn her daughter from deciding well when she wants to have sex and to whom, since she's just had her first period. She then starts telling about No Name Woman, that should be the protagonist's aunt. I say "should be", because the protagonist seems to fill in the blanks in the parts her mother leaves hanging, so we don't really know which parts happened for real and which are invented. The ending of this part is brutal, because No Name Woman doesn't have a nice ending, and the protagonist seems touched by the story of this aunt who has no name and is like a ghost because her mother tells her she should pretend she never heard this story and that her aunt never existed. But it's impossibile, since her aunt drowned herself and her stillborn baby and she says Chinese people are afraid of drowning people and think that the water has been poisoned. She killed herself, but she WON'T be forgotten by the other villagers for sure. Now that she heard this story, she doesn't want to forget her either.
The events of No Name Woman seem to change the protagonist and I would interpret the second part, White Tigers, as the beginning of her journey of self-awareness. She doesn't want to end up like No Name Woman and she wants to be able to tell her story, to find her voice, whatever that may be. So in this part we have her remembering the story of Fa Mu Lan, a famous heroine we all know from an ancient Chinese ballad. It's by realizing that her mother's talking-story can help her become stronger and not become a slave or a wife. The talking-story has the power to break the silence that wives, women, slaves, are obliged to respect. Mu Lan's story is the perfect example of how a woman can be a warrior, because she decides to take her father's place in the army out of respect for him since he was old and frail, but after the war is over, she can go back to being a daughter and a woman and continue with her life... if you imagine that at some point she and her husband have a baby during the war and he asks him to take the child to her parents so she can continue fighting. So a woman can still be a mother, a daughter, but she can also be a fighter. Even in this part we find ghostly figures, the couple who teaches the girl how to survive in the forest and to be independent. And, ultimately, the true revenge is becoming a warrior despite the odds. In the protagonist's world, it means telling a story and telling her story, because the silence is what kills a person for good.
The third part is about her mother's story. Her mother's story is also sad because we are showed through the talking-story that she went to medical school and she was a midwife, but when she could finally come to the US, her degree didn't have any value so she had to give up her job. During the years she was at medical school, there is a moment where she offers to chase away a ghost that lingers in a room, hence the title of this section is Shaman. This is another transgression, because women aren't shamans, only men become shamans. So the protagonist's mother is not only a woman of science because she's a midwife/nurse, but she is also a woman in contact with ghosts. In this part the protagonist also realizes that her mother wants her to be happy and that they are both women warriors.
The fourth part is called At The Western Palace and the "western" is surely referred to America. In this part we are in a recent present for the author, at least recent to before this book was published in 1976. We know more stories about her mother, Brave Orchid, who is waiting for her sister Moon Orchid to arrive to the US and to face her husband after thirty years of not seeing him. This is an example of how some Chinese women couldn't go to the US because America had issued a law that forbid Chinese men from bringing their wives there (so they couldn't settle and create families). In Moon Orchid's case, though, her husband had remarried, and unlike Brave Orchid who was brave and at some point decided to give up her midwife job to reach her husband, Moon Orchid is the example of the left behind. Her husband is enraged she came there after he built a new life, and she can't bear it. At this point, the protagonist has a talking-story already in the works and we can say that the character of Moon Orchid could mirror No Name Woman. Both are the protagonist's aunts but they are very different: No Name Woman kept mum about the father of her child and her "impurity" and "transgression" led her to her death and revenge (she drowned herself so that the villagers would fear her and won't use the water of that well anymore), while Moon Orchid was left behind and in a place that clearly represented her husband's past. She wasn't memorable like No Name Woman whose story will surely haunt the villagers. Moon Orchid goes mad and I don't know, I feel like is not a woman warrior... completely. She maybe tries to be strong despite being rejected, but at the same time, she can't. Infact Brave Orchid says that the difference between sane people and mad people is that the former have a variety of talking-stories, while the latter just repeat the same one all over again. Moon Orchid was broken and her sister helped her find herself again.
The last part, "A Song For A Barbarian Reed Pipe" is about the final coming together of her identity. We saw how much women and the bonds between women were crucial in this book and how the talking-story Brave Orchid starts telling her daughter were also powerful. The talking-story was something that the protagonist didn't completely understand because it was part of the Chinese culture her mother knew but that she didn't, and her mother didn't explain the things she told her, so the protagonist was left to use her imagination. So on one hand we have her mother who is a sort of guardian of Chinese culture that she wants to keep and teach to her daughter, but on the other hand we have Kingston who is a second generation Chinese-American that doesn't know her ancestry's language very well and she's growing up in America, so we have to consider that too. The last part is the final consolidation of her talking-story as she finally finds her identity. Being her half-Chinese and half-American, she tries to create an identity where there is harmony between these two important parts of her life. She uses the poet Ts'ai Yen as her "example", because she was held captive for years and she considered her captors who weren't Chinese, barbarians. But then she sort of understands and embraces both cultures because she marries one of the nomads so that she can bring him Chinese descendants. Basically, Kingston wants us to know that she can't choose between China and American. Yes, she is American... but she is also Chinese, and the she can't deny that her mother's talking-stories also shaped her life.
The fact that Maxine Hong Kingston was criticized for having written a book that didn't adhere to Chinese tradition so that she could appeal to white Americans, is baffling. It's true that she rewrites some things, but this is also her way to talking-story: she is telling us what she knows as if we were her friends and her storytelling is engaging because you never know how the story will end - nor did she, for real. But she is also American, so it's obvious that she doesn't only want to talk about Chinese culture as she knows it, but also make her American teen-self shine through the narration. After all, that's the concept of The Woman Warrior. The talking-story. The only way to inspire people with positive role models so that they will feel that if they want, they can be anything.
The title itself suggests the idea of this book: a woman can be a woman but she can also be a warrior, in the sense that she is self-empowered and independent. The point is not be a warrior and "change" gender, it's embracing being a woman BUT also be the heroine of your own story.
I would not label this book a novel because it isn't, but it's not an autobiography either. The fascinating thing about TWW is that is a mix of reality and fantasy, of past and present, truth and lies, and it's engaging because you always wonder where the truth lies (pun intended).
It is divided in five sections, each filled with references and legends that strengthen the significance of the whole idea of the book.
The first section, No Name Woman, begins with the protagonist/writer's mother telling her not to speak about the story she's about to reveal to her. This is important, because the whole book is about keeping silent and be a respectful Chinese woman who only talks when necessary. In Brave Orchid's mind, she knows she shouldn't speak but maybe now that she isn't in China her control wavers, and she uses the first talking-story as a cautionary tale, as a way to warn her daughter from deciding well when she wants to have sex and to whom, since she's just had her first period. She then starts telling about No Name Woman, that should be the protagonist's aunt. I say "should be", because the protagonist seems to fill in the blanks in the parts her mother leaves hanging, so we don't really know which parts happened for real and which are invented. The ending of this part is brutal, because No Name Woman doesn't have a nice ending, and the protagonist seems touched by the story of this aunt who has no name and is like a ghost because her mother tells her she should pretend she never heard this story and that her aunt never existed. But it's impossibile, since her aunt drowned herself and her stillborn baby and she says Chinese people are afraid of drowning people and think that the water has been poisoned. She killed herself, but she WON'T be forgotten by the other villagers for sure. Now that she heard this story, she doesn't want to forget her either.
The events of No Name Woman seem to change the protagonist and I would interpret the second part, White Tigers, as the beginning of her journey of self-awareness. She doesn't want to end up like No Name Woman and she wants to be able to tell her story, to find her voice, whatever that may be. So in this part we have her remembering the story of Fa Mu Lan, a famous heroine we all know from an ancient Chinese ballad. It's by realizing that her mother's talking-story can help her become stronger and not become a slave or a wife. The talking-story has the power to break the silence that wives, women, slaves, are obliged to respect. Mu Lan's story is the perfect example of how a woman can be a warrior, because she decides to take her father's place in the army out of respect for him since he was old and frail, but after the war is over, she can go back to being a daughter and a woman and continue with her life... if you imagine that at some point she and her husband have a baby during the war and he asks him to take the child to her parents so she can continue fighting. So a woman can still be a mother, a daughter, but she can also be a fighter. Even in this part we find ghostly figures, the couple who teaches the girl how to survive in the forest and to be independent. And, ultimately, the true revenge is becoming a warrior despite the odds. In the protagonist's world, it means telling a story and telling her story, because the silence is what kills a person for good.
The third part is about her mother's story. Her mother's story is also sad because we are showed through the talking-story that she went to medical school and she was a midwife, but when she could finally come to the US, her degree didn't have any value so she had to give up her job. During the years she was at medical school, there is a moment where she offers to chase away a ghost that lingers in a room, hence the title of this section is Shaman. This is another transgression, because women aren't shamans, only men become shamans. So the protagonist's mother is not only a woman of science because she's a midwife/nurse, but she is also a woman in contact with ghosts. In this part the protagonist also realizes that her mother wants her to be happy and that they are both women warriors.
The fourth part is called At The Western Palace and the "western" is surely referred to America. In this part we are in a recent present for the author, at least recent to before this book was published in 1976. We know more stories about her mother, Brave Orchid, who is waiting for her sister Moon Orchid to arrive to the US and to face her husband after thirty years of not seeing him. This is an example of how some Chinese women couldn't go to the US because America had issued a law that forbid Chinese men from bringing their wives there (so they couldn't settle and create families). In Moon Orchid's case, though, her husband had remarried, and unlike Brave Orchid who was brave and at some point decided to give up her midwife job to reach her husband, Moon Orchid is the example of the left behind. Her husband is enraged she came there after he built a new life, and she can't bear it. At this point, the protagonist has a talking-story already in the works and we can say that the character of Moon Orchid could mirror No Name Woman. Both are the protagonist's aunts but they are very different: No Name Woman kept mum about the father of her child and her "impurity" and "transgression" led her to her death and revenge (she drowned herself so that the villagers would fear her and won't use the water of that well anymore), while Moon Orchid was left behind and in a place that clearly represented her husband's past. She wasn't memorable like No Name Woman whose story will surely haunt the villagers. Moon Orchid goes mad and I don't know, I feel like is not a woman warrior... completely. She maybe tries to be strong despite being rejected, but at the same time, she can't. Infact Brave Orchid says that the difference between sane people and mad people is that the former have a variety of talking-stories, while the latter just repeat the same one all over again. Moon Orchid was broken and her sister helped her find herself again.
The last part, "A Song For A Barbarian Reed Pipe" is about the final coming together of her identity. We saw how much women and the bonds between women were crucial in this book and how the talking-story Brave Orchid starts telling her daughter were also powerful. The talking-story was something that the protagonist didn't completely understand because it was part of the Chinese culture her mother knew but that she didn't, and her mother didn't explain the things she told her, so the protagonist was left to use her imagination. So on one hand we have her mother who is a sort of guardian of Chinese culture that she wants to keep and teach to her daughter, but on the other hand we have Kingston who is a second generation Chinese-American that doesn't know her ancestry's language very well and she's growing up in America, so we have to consider that too. The last part is the final consolidation of her talking-story as she finally finds her identity. Being her half-Chinese and half-American, she tries to create an identity where there is harmony between these two important parts of her life. She uses the poet Ts'ai Yen as her "example", because she was held captive for years and she considered her captors who weren't Chinese, barbarians. But then she sort of understands and embraces both cultures because she marries one of the nomads so that she can bring him Chinese descendants. Basically, Kingston wants us to know that she can't choose between China and American. Yes, she is American... but she is also Chinese, and the she can't deny that her mother's talking-stories also shaped her life.
The fact that Maxine Hong Kingston was criticized for having written a book that didn't adhere to Chinese tradition so that she could appeal to white Americans, is baffling. It's true that she rewrites some things, but this is also her way to talking-story: she is telling us what she knows as if we were her friends and her storytelling is engaging because you never know how the story will end - nor did she, for real. But she is also American, so it's obvious that she doesn't only want to talk about Chinese culture as she knows it, but also make her American teen-self shine through the narration. After all, that's the concept of The Woman Warrior. The talking-story. The only way to inspire people with positive role models so that they will feel that if they want, they can be anything.
medium-paced