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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 4 page paper discusses Maxine Hong Kingston's autobiography "The Woman Warrior" and argues that her use of repetition and multiple viewpoints is a powerful device that forces readers to evaluate their experience. Bibliography lists 1 source.
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4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVWmnWar.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
and spiritual examinations of the effort to exist in the old culture and the new one simultaneously. In her autobiography The woman warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston uses stories to show
us the struggle of one woman to find her way in a new culture when her old one has driven home the point that she, as a woman, is worthless.
Discussion The title of the book suggests immediately that Maxine is different: shes going to fight to realize her potential. In so doing, however, she comes into direct conflict with
her mother, and this suggests several reasons why Kingston tells the same story in different ways. First, by telling a story more than once she subtly reinforces the idea that
she is refusing to take her mothers word for the event; she wants objective "testimony." Second, she is reminding us that people can see the same exact thing and report
it in entirely different ways, which is why eyewitnesses are seldom reliable. And she is also showing us that mother and daughter approach storytelling differently: the daughter is adjusting to
a culture that uses writing while her mother comes from an oral tradition. The structure of the book itself then can be seen to represent the structure of the culture.
Kingston makes much of the idea of the oral tradition, and her inability to partake in it. The ability to use language is vital for a new immigrant, of course,
but in the case of Maxine and other Chinese girls, it is more than a simple means of expression; it goes to the heart of how the Chinese feel about
themselves: "If you dont talk, you cant have a personality. . . . Youve got to let people know you have a personality and a brain" (Kingston). When another Chinese
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