1 The Woman Warrior; A Brutal Examination of Self You must not tell anyone, my mother said, what I am about

to tell you, (Kingston 3). In the opening line of Maxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior; Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, the reader is immediately plunged into a realm of secrecy one filled with thoughts forbidden and feelings untold a realm that holds true for the entire novel. In her novel/autobiography, Kingston challenged conventional lines of fiction and nonfiction, conventional lines where thoughts and feelings cannot be forbidden or untold, and asked her readers to take her book as a product not of any specific state of mind or influence (China, America, women, history), but a product of herself. True to life, her autobiography combines the sphere of influences that make a human human, a single thing alone cannot define a person people are products of countless influences and experiences. In her novel, Maxine examines the influences and experiences that have had the largest impacts on her life, and through this discussion she reveals the major lessons she has learned in life. Looking at The Woman Warrior through a formalist, feminist, and new historical lens provides unique messages. The formalist lens will use the text alone it will discuss the conflicts with in the novel and how these conflicts prove the books message. The feminist lens will identify gender roles set for Maxine during childhood that she ultimately breaks. And finally, the new historical lens will reveal the large historical context the book is placed in, and the message about society that the context combined with the book actually shows. Yet, while each message and each lens points out a different aspect of the novel, all arguments still follows the main theme that people are a product of their influences and only through evaluating these influences and taking action on their resolutions can they find equilibrium and peace as human beings.

2 Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies? (Kingston 5-6) asks Maxine Hong Kingston in her novel/autobiography The Woman Warrior. Maxine combines prose with history to make a startling novel of selfdiscovery and definition. In the book, Kingston and her siblings are raised by their immigrant parents parents who still live in their Chinese village despite the American soil beneath their house. The family still lives in China, both in that they live in a predominately Chinese community, and in that they keep their Chinese customs despite living in America. Throughout the work, Kingston chronicles how, Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhood fits in solid America, (5). Maxine relays the incidents of her childhood; the things that have made her who she is and the things that have made her define both of her identities Chinese and American alike. For Maxine cannot be American because in American eyes she is Chinese and yet, she cannot be Chinese, because she was born in America. By examining Maxines childhood through a formalist analysis taking the text alone and identifying the conflicts within and how these conflicts support the books message we can see Maxines alienation in both an American and a Chinese way of life, the conflict that arises out of them, and the way in which Kingston comes to terms with this conflict. We can also see that in the end, Maxine does find a resolution between her two influences of America and China. However, this is not a resolution in the traditional sense, meaning a resolution where all conflict ends. Rather, Maxine chooses to accept the conflict, and takes each day as it comes. Maxines resolution is to keep on defining herself each redefinition continually changes and never really ends. This decision (to keep

3 redefining) makes sense because her book is a book about life, and in a madcap love of all the intricacies and complexities of life; Maxine admits that she still has trouble with her own. If she is in constant consideration if she still has trouble, then she is constantly weighing both sides of the situation both the Chinese and the American identities and both find a place in her every day actions. One of the main areas of conflict that Maxine struggles with, one that even all children struggle with is being ashamed of her parents. But that stomach-sinking, let-me-die-now, pleasegod-no feeling is exacerbated beyond the normal standard because of her immigrant parents who refuse to accept American traditions and yet expect Americans to act on Chinese traditions. Kingstons mother is the main antagonist of such Chinese traditions in the novel an everpresent reminder of the Chinese traditions Maxine is expected to uphold, an ever-present dictator and tormentor, while Maxines father is only a distant and disapproving figure. The embarrassment that Kingston and her siblings face should not be taken lightly, because it is so scarring. In a sense, the human baby is not isolated but is part of a physiologically and emotionally entwined dyad of infant and caregiver, (Small) as a child, one is raised in synchronization with his or her parents. When Maxine deals with embarrassment, she is forced to choose between the principles she was raised on (China) and what she feels to be normal (America). An example of the embarrassment Maxine faces is shown in the incident at the pharmacy. Once, during her childhood, a delivery boy who worked at the pharmacy brought medicine to the wrong house, to Maxines house. Maxines mother is enraged; Weve got to avenge this wrong on our future, on our health, and on our lives. Nobodys going to sicken my children and get away with it, (Kingston 169). In vengeance, she sends Maxine to the pharmacy to make the druggists stop the curse (170), Maxines mother tells Kingston she must

4 go to the pharmacist and get reparation candy (in China, pharmacists regularly give candy along with medication), her mother tells her what to say to the pharmacist: You have tainted my house with sick medicine and must remove the curse with sweetness, (170). Stomach sinking and embarrassed already, Maxine goes to the pharmacist and asks for the candy. She gets the candy, but in a way that is mocking and lacks respect. They gave us Halloween candy in December, Christmas candy around Valentines day, candy hearts at Easter, and Easter eggs at Halloween. See? said our mother. They understand. You kids just arent very brave. But I knew they did not understand. They thought we were beggars without a home who lived in back of the laundry. They felt sorry for us (Kingston 171). They begin to give the family old candy, and continued to every year. To Maxine as a child, this entire situation exemplifies the way the Americans viewed her family as a joke, and how she was forced to play into that joke because she could not deny her mothers demands or her familys Chinese traditions. Her embarrassment is far deeper than most childrens, because in each embarrassing incident, Maxine is shoved into the reality that she does not fit in anywhere neither with her family nor with America. When she first asks the pharmacist for the candy, and he does not understand, Maxine is forced to reply, That is the way the Chinese do it, (171). The pharmacist responds, Do what? (171) And helpless Maxine, only a child, answers, Do things, (171). Maxine felt the weight and immensity of things impossible to explain to the druggist, (171). To explain is to bridge a gap between cultures, and when Maxine could not understand it herself, least of all as a child, how could she help a pharmacist understand? While the issue of embarrassment establishes the conflict Maxine deals with, it is only one kind of conflict. Embarrassment deals with the American world and it deals with Maxine on

5 the outside. But internal conflict takes place as well throughout her whole life, Maxine struggles with talking out loud and making herself heard. During the first silent year I spoke to no one at school, did not ask before going to the lavatory, and flunked kindergarten, (Kingston 165). Here as well, we see Maxines mother as an antagonist, one who tells Maxine that she cut her tongue, my mother cut my tongue. She pushed my tongue up and sliced the frenum. Or maybe she snipped it with a pair of nail scissors. I dont remember her doing it, only her telling me about it (Kingston 163-164). School is the hardest time for Maxine in terms of talking, school is where the conflict of talking becomes pronounced and evident. Maxine goes to two schools, American public, and Chinese school. In American school, she is silent and in Chinese school, her voice is broken. And while most of the Chinese girls in American school are silent (all suffering from alienation due to ethnicity), Maxine is one of the only Chinese girls who is silent in Chinese school. This once again displays that Maxine can not fit in either place. In American school, Kingstons silence was, thickesttotalduring the three years I covered my school paintings with black paint. I painted layers of black over houses and flowers and suns, and when I drew on the blackboard, I put a layer of chalk on top. I was making a stage curtain, and it was the moment before the curtain parted or rose My parents took the pictures home. I spread them out (so black and full of possibilities) and pretended the curtains were swinging open, flying up, one after another, sunlight underneath, mighty operas (Kingston 165). Unable to show her true self to the American world and hidden behind the Chinese opera curtain, Maxine is trapped in limbo, always waiting for more, but never opening that curtain to receive it. Even though Kingston is silent, she wishes that she wasnt, and she wishes that the curtain and

6 her silence could fly up and reveal the Chinese opera a show of noise and volume and beauty that is her true self that lies underneath. But the curtains offered protection so black and full of possibility, the curtains and Maxine herself remained full of possibility if they remained closed. Whereas if she spoke, she would have to put herself above others and deal with the social situations that would inevitably follow, so instead, Maxine settles for total silence and blackened drawings. In Chinese school, Maxine did use her voice more, but only in groups. There we chanted together, voices rising and falling, loud and soft, some boys shouting, everybody reading together and not alone with one voice, (Kingston 167). At the same time that the shelter of other voices provided a cushion for Maxine, it was also another kind of black curtain that she could hide behind. The American school and the Chinese school displayed Maxines conflict with talking, a conflict that was directly related to the Chinese beliefs that Maxine was raised on. I could not understand I. The Chinese I has seven strokes, intricacies. How could the American I, assuredly wearing a hat like the Chinese, have only three strokes, the middle so straight? Was it out of politeness that this writer left off strokes the way a Chinese has to writer her own name small and crooked? No, it was not politeness; I is a capital and you is lower-case (Kingston 166-167). To the Chinese, unlike the Americans, the group or the family is more important than the individual. Talking aloud is putting your own voice above others and making the I more important than the you. Talking is a conflict between China and America, to speak aloud is to conform to American identities and Maxine is unable to give outright submission to one identity of self. So instead, Maxine either doesnt speak at all (drawing black curtains or talking when she alone cannot be heard) or struggles through each word she speaks, her voice sounding like,

7 a crippled animal running on broken legs. You could hear the splinters in my voice, bones rubbing jagged against one another, (Kingston 169). Maxine cannot trust her voice with either the Chinese or the Americans, believing that both would condemn what she says, Sometimes I hated the ghosts [Americans] for not letting us talk; sometimes I hated the secrecy of the Chinese, (Kingston 183). How do you choose? When your very speech contradicts some belief or value that your conscience or your society tells you that you must follow, how do you choose between the desire for speech and the need for silence? Thus far, Maxine has been unable to choose unable to choose between speaking and not, unable to explain things to the pharmacist and instead, she is simply torn, ragged edges flapping in a desolate wind. Obviously, Maxines childhood was full of turmoil, more so than any normal child would have to deal with. And one cannot simply exist like this, always in frustration and confusion without some sort of acceptance and coming to terms with the situation some peace of mind. It is evident after looking at her embarrassment and her fear of speech that Maxine is trying to please both her Chinese parents and the American world, and the tugging is taking its toll on Maxine. Only after a breakdown, and isolation does Maxine finally realize her salvation. Only after those two stages does she realize that it is okay to have conflict, and that she does not have to have a set identity or set quantities of Chinese and American within to be accepted. First the confrontation: while in sixth grade, Maxine and her sister form a sort of friendship with another pair of sisters. It is strange because while Maxine plays with them, she hates the younger one because the younger one is so like herself but has no reason to be. Because while Maxines mother does not protect her or her sister and shoves both into the American world, the other quiet girl is sheltered, their parents kept the older girl back to protect the younger one.protected both daughters. When it sprinkled, they kept them home from school. The girls did not work for

8 a living the way we did, (Kingston 171). Maxine sees her own faults expounded in someone else, faults that are caused because of her sad and lonely life and she sees them in someone else someone whose parents care for them even though they are girls (Maxines family considers girls worthless). The years of frustration and anger at her own incapability to find a place of belongingness overwhelm her, and hatred builds towards this unassuming quiet girl. Why should Maxine suffer through her own faults when there is a girl who has everything, a supportive and loving family that is around the corner for her, how can this girl cop out and choose to be quiet? Someone with normalcy waiting chooses awkwardness instead, and Maxine snaps with the unfairness of it all. One afternoon, the seething riot of anger inside Maxine at her own situation and the other girls, at both their failings manifests and turns into physical action. The girls (both pairs of sisters, Maxine included) stay after school and play. The shadows grow longer and longer, and though it is long past the time when they should be home, they continue to play. Then, in a quirk of fate, Maxine and the other, quiet girl are alone together in a bathroom. Maxine advances. I walked closer. She backed away, puzzlement, then alarm in her eyes. Youre going to talk, I said, my voice steady and normal, as it is when talking to the familiar, the weak, and the small. I am going to make you talk you sissy-girl. She stopped backing away and stood fixed, (Kingston 175). And Maxine does really try to make this girl talk. Maxine acts in an insane desperation to fix her own life by forcing someone else to act as she wished she could, believing that if this other girl does it, then everything will be better Maxine resorts to violence and heckling. Her neatness bothered me. I hated the way she folded the wax paper from her lunch; she did not wad her brown paper bag and her school papers. I hated her

9 clothesthe blue pastel cardigan, the white blouse with the collar that lay flat over the cardigan, the homemade flat, cotton skirt she wore when everybody else was wearing flared skirts. I hated pastels; I would wear black always. I squeezed again, harder, even though her cheek had a weak rubbery feeling I did not like. I squeezed one cheek, then the other, back and forth until the tears ran out of her eyes as if I had pulled them out. Stop crying, I said. If youre not stupid, I said to the quiet girl, whats your name? She shook her head, and some hair caught in the tears; wet black hair stuck to the side of the pink and white face. I reached up (she was taller than I) and took a strand of hair. I pulled it. Well, then, lets honk your hair, I said. Honk. Honk. Then I pulled the other side ho-o-n-nka long pull; ho-o-n-n-nka longer pull. I could see her little white ears, like white cut worms curled underneath the hair. Talk! I yelled into each cutworm (Kingston 176-177). The madness that takes hold of Maxine is inevitable, the mere existence of someone like the quiet girl someone who is loved and sheltered, someone who does not have to constantly struggle between two identities, and yet chooses, chooses, to make life difficult for herself this mere existence had pushed Maxine over the edge and into her own sorrow, frustration, and anger at life. Immediately following Maxines burst of anger, she is isolated. The next year and a half is spent on a couch at home with a mysterious illness (Kingston 182) that has no pain and no symptoms (Kingston 182). Instead of going on with school, Maxine tries to avoid reality and avoid her anger at life by shutting it all out. She lives,

10 like the Victorian recluses I read about. I had a rented hospital bed in the living room, where I watched soap operas on t.v., and my family cranked me up and down. I saw no one but family, who took good care of me. I could have no visitors, no other relatives, no villagers. My bed was against the west window, and I watched the seasons change the peach tree. I had a bell to ring for help. I used a bedpan. It was the best year and a half of my life. Nothing changed (Kingston 182). Maxine falls back into the pattern established during her struggles with embarrassment and talking by avoiding it all. By painting curtains she avoided talking, and by not talking she avoided embarrassment, and living in the Chinese village her parents constructed allowed her not to confront her questions of self. She does not have to deal with the everyday questions of loyalty, either an American existence or a Chinese one, because at home she can merely exist. And at the same time that is all she can do. Watching the seasons change through a window, she leaves the vitality of life for the false comfort of an unchallenging, packaged, hypoallergenic existence. For someone like Maxine, who had enough fire to struggle this much for so long in the first place, such an existence can only last so long. One day, her mother her doctor, decides that the illness is over and Maxine must go to school again. Stepping outside for the first time in a year and a half, Maxine realizes what she was missing all that time, and why she cannot avoid life all together. The sky and the tress, the sun were immenseno longer framed by a window, no longer grayed with a fly screen. I sat down on the sidewalk in amazementthe night, the stars. But at school I had to figure out again how to talk, (Kingston 182). And Maxine does just this she figures out how to talk, how to catalogue in her head what needs to be said and why and finally, she says it all.

11 Maybe because I was the one with the tongue cut loose, I had grown inside me a list of over two hundred things that I had to tell my mother so that she would know the true things about me and to stop the pain in my throat, (Kingston 200). And so, slowly, one by one, Maxine tells her mother the things that burn inside her. Silly things, like how the first thing she can remember consciously killing was a spider, and how she had prayed to the Christian god for a white horse things of meaning to Maxine, but of irrelevance to her mother. But each telling, each release, took away a little of Maxines pain. Until just after another release, Maxines mother replies, I cant stand this whispering Senseless gabbings every night. I wish you would stop, (Kingston 200). And although Maxine stops for the time being, she also says that she feels something alive tearing at my throat, bite by bite, from the inside, (Kingston 200) Maxine feels the truth, her voice, her need for peace tearing at her insides and longing to get out until it finally does. One night when the laundry was so busy that the whole family was eating dinner there, crowded around the little round table, my throat burst open. I looked directly at my mother and screamed. My telling was scrambled and out of order. When I said them out loud I saw that some of the items were ten years old already, and I had outgrown them. But they kept pouring out anyway in the voice like the Chinese opera. I could hear the drums and the cymbals and the gongs and brass horns (Kingston 201, 203). And even though it was hard, the telling was beautiful at the same time. The sweet release of all that has troubled her over the years, all that has ever constrained Maxine, it all gives her release and sends her black curtains flying upwards to reveal the Chinese opera beneath. After this outburst, Maxine leaves for college and follows an American way of life. Looking for logic and

12 a clean, plasticized way of life, Maxine finds the same loss of vitality that came from a Chinese life alone (when she was a Victorian recluse), Now colors are gentler and fewer; smells are antiseptic, (Kingston 205). Maxine loses the sense of fantasy in life that makes it all worthwhile, and so realizes that both the American and the Chinese in her are necessary. I continue to sort out whats just my childhood, just my imagination, just my family, just the village, just movies, just living, (Kingston 205) but she finds that her difficulty with speech remains in a good way however. Whereas before, to avoid pain and confusion, Maxine would stay quiet, now to get rid of pain, she has to speak her mind, The throat pain always returns, though, unless I tell what I really think, whether or not I lose my job, or spit out gaucheries all over a party, (Kingston 205). In the end, Maxine comes to terms with her lot in life. Even if there are gaucheries splattered all over a party, Maxine takes the good with the bad and evaluates every day with consideration of both sides within herself the Chinese and the American. She even tells her mother that she too talk storys (talk story being the method by which Maxines mother taught her children, stories guided by necessity and harsh with the brutal reality of their homeland China, and the expectations of family), I told her I also talk story (Kingston 206). In response to this, her mother and her combine stories, combine past and present, combine Chinese and America in A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe. A tale of a woman captured by the barbarians of the north in China, who lived, fought, had children, and in the end even sang among them. The barbarians were not Chinese and neither were her children, even she had lost some parts of herself that were Chinese but in the end, when she sang, all, even though it was written in the barbarian lands and sung in Chinese, understood her song,

13 Her words seemed to be Chinese, but the barbarians understood their sadness and anger. Sometimes they thought they could catch barbarian phrases about forever wandering. Her children did not laugh, but eventually sang along when she left her tent to sit by the winter campfires, ringed by barbarians. She brought her songs back from the savage lands, and one of the three that has been passed down to us is Eighteen Stanzas for a Barbarian Reed Pipe, a song that Chinese sing to their own instruments. It translated well (Kingston 209). Maxine, once wandering forever, sad and angry, was able to return from the barbarian lands to China and can sing her barbarian song to a Chinese instrument. She is able to establish her identities by constantly redefining them (evaluating her influences), acting upon this redefinition, and is finally able to gain a sense of peace. The formalist lens is especially useful is examining Maxines ultimate message in the novel. The lens cuts through a lot of side layers by focusing in on the way Kingston (while writing) uses conflict within herself, and how that conflict is resolved, to reveal an ultimate truth in the novel. At the same time, this method of analysis can be detrimental to the end product the message discovered by the formalist approach can be too simple. There are many more layers to Kingstons novel than simply a girl discovering herself she also displays struggles with other children of ethnicity, has issues with her distant if not absent father, and rewrites the story of Mulan on her own terms (the section in the novel labeled White Tigers, that will unfortunately not be discussed in this paper as well as the other issues cited above). There is so much more to the book than what the formalist critique reveals, in fact the formalist critique glosses over much of the book. This weakness must be kept in mind when reading formalist analyses, if it is not, the analyses given could be misinterpreted as the only message their

14 respective books, which is anything but true. However, if this flaw in formalist critique is kept in mind, the critique can be helpful is giving a basic line of understanding for any novel. One way to correct the flaw of formalism is to use a specific lens, by narrowing the area and the issue that one is analyzing, one can avoid glossing over parts of the novel or oversimplification. A specific lens can be applied to The Woman Warrior is that of feminism. Feminist issues pervade much of Maxines childhood, and a feminist critique will cover a large issue that is never addressed in the formalist critique. Stop that crying! my mother would yell. Im going to hit you if you dont stop. Bad girl! Stop! Im going to remember to never hit or to scold my children for crying, I thought, because then they will only cry more. Im not a bad girl, I would scream. Im not a bad girl. Im not a bad girl. I might as well have said, Im not a girl, (Kingston 46). For Maxine growing up, it was obvious that being a girl was not the ideal. In addition to her issues with her identity; trying to understand which parts of her are Chinese and which parts are American, she also has to identify who she is as a woman among the Chinese. In a novel/autobiography where everyone but Maxine seems to identify women with slaves, where being a girl means that you are bad and to be good is to be a boy, Maxine struggles with the idea that she was bad before she ever did anything wrong. Her family follows the traditional Confucian ideologies, where girls are groomed to be wives, and a wife, had no power over her own life; her husband's decisions were her own. She was forced to be completely subservient to her husband's family (Fulton). Maxine sees a future of, looking after a household, cooking and sewing, flower arrangement, embroidery and, above all, to obey, without question (qtd. Chang 70), (Fulton). With this bleak future in mind, Maxine grapples with her own

15 desires for freedom and the consequences of having this freedom. There are two of her mothers stories in Maxines childhood that aid this battle. One will be examined in detail: The No Name Woman, and the other is examined in less detail, but still has a large impact on Maxine the story of Fa Mu Lan. Maxines mother, by telling her these stories and by acting like the woman warrior Fa Mu Lan, provokes the conflict in Maxine. Maxine does not know if she should follow her desire for freedom or to conform to the Chinese ideal of a woman meek, submissive, hardworking, and obedient. The No Name woman story tells Maxine to be the submissive woman, or else terrible consequences will befall her. The second story of Fa Mu Lan and Maxines mothers actions tell Maxine to be someone who stands up for herself a woman warrior. By examining both these stories and their effects on Maxine, specifically the way she treats the No Name Woman because of Fa Mu Lan and her mothers actions, we see that even though there could be dire consequences Maxine is able to rise against oppression and stand up for herself, advocating the feminist message and yet, still keeping this message realistic for women everywhere. To understand the feminist message of The Woman Warrior, we must first identify the oppression that Maxine must rise up against we must identify the rules for women that exist in Maxines family as told through Maxines mothers tale of the No Name Woman. Maxines mother tells her this story when she has her first menstruation. The story is about Maxines fathers sister, a woman who had an illegitimate child before Maxine had been born and when Maxines mother (and her aunt) still lived in China. The familys Chinese village is going through a period of famine, and because the No Name Aunt commits adultery (her husband is in America working and sending money back to the family), she is in a way insulting the entire village. Adultery is extravagance. Could people who hatch their own chicks and eat the

16 embryos and the heads for delicacies and boil the feet in vinegar for party food, leaving only the gravel, eating even the gizzard liningcould such a people engender a prodigal aunt? To be a woman, to have a daughter in starvation time was a waste enough, (Kingston 6). Although it may seem that this quote is addressing a practical matter in terms of food and the inability to feed an extra child, it is actually slandering women. To be a womanwas waste enough. The fact that the village discredits Maxines aunt automatically for simply being a woman and nothing else blows away the idea that the village was considering the practicalities of the situation the hate for the woman and her illegitimate child was inherent, meaning the village hated her and her child because she was a woman, and not because it was a time of famine and they could not feed the child (the hate would have existed in a time of bounty as well). As well, even if the affair was not her choice, it did not matter. She was the woman in the relationship, and so she was blamed. The consequences that the angry villagers wreak are terrible, and they fall upon the No Name Woman and her entire family. The villagers broke in the front and the back doors at the same time, even though we had not locked the doors against them. Their knives dripped with the blood of our animals. They smeared blood on the doors and walls. One woman swung a chicken, whose throat she had slit, splattering blood in red arcs about her. We stood together in the middle of our house, in the family hall with the pictures and tables of the ancestors around us, and looked straight ahead, (Kingston 4). The village takes its vengeance because if the family thinks themselves so rich that they can be wasteful enough to have a daughter who commits adultery if that family thinks they can defy the rules of society - then they do not deserve any food, any home, or any respect from their ancestors. Maxines mother intentionally tells her this story when Maxine is first able to have

17 children. Her mother tells her the terrible consequences that come from disobeying the female expectations and customs, and by having an illegitimate child. The story is a warning to Maxine, as if to say one misstep and you will bring dishonor to the entire family. Maxines mother goes so far as to say, Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Dont humiliate us. The villagers are watchful, (Kingston 5). (After moving to America, Maxines family moves to a place where everyone else from that same village in China has moved, and so the villagers can still watch.) From the beginning of the story of the No Name Woman, Maxine learns that freedom will cost you dearly. One would think that the punishment of the No Name aunt would end there; but no, the story continues. Quickly the family turns on the No Name Woman, and drives her away. In her imaginings, Maxine sees the aunt running into the fields and laying there for hours during labor. Then, the aunt is going to the pigsty and is giving birth there. Unexpectedly, the aunt finds that she loves her child. But this love is no aid, to love the child makes their fate worse, makes it all the more painful. Toward morning she picked up the baby and walked to the well. It was probably a girl; there is some hope of forgiveness for boys. (Kingston 15) There is some hope for boys, Maxine says. Even though it was an illegitimately born child whose conception caused such violence and destruction if the baby had been a boy it would have some hope of forgiveness and would have been raised. A boy had no end of faith and love, but the girls only option was death, once again proving the poor treatment of women inherent to Maxines Chinese village. But the aunts the No Name Womans punishment unfortunately does not end in death. The real punishment wasthe familys deliberately forgetting her. Her betrayal so maddened them, they saw to it that she would suffer forever, even after death. Always hungry, always needing, she would have to beg food from the other ghosts, snatch and steal it from those

18 whose living descendants five them gifts, (Kingston 16). Not even finding relief in death, the aunt lives on, tormented forever for a crime she probably did not even choose to commit. However, scarier still than her aunts fate is that through all of this darker interpretation of the story, Maxine relates herself to the aunts fate. My aunt haunts meI do not think she always means me well. I am telling on her, and she was a spite suicide, drowning herself in the drinking water. The 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 substitute. (Kingston 16) Maxine believes and is ultimately haunted by the idea that she could become her aunt, that she could be trapped forever in unhappiness and abandonment with one wrong move. Maxine is horrified and afraid; and these are the feelings and the threats she must overcome if she wishes for freedom for a release. Another lesson from the No Name Woman that if Maxine desires individuality she has to give up her family and her history - a very heavy roadblock on the path to freedom for such a young girl. As well as the No Name Woman, Maxines mother tells her the story of Fa Mu Lan, and acts as Fa Mu Lan does. Fa Mu Lan is the story better known to Americans as Mulan. It tells of a Chinese swordswoman who poses as a man to serve in the Chinese army, who fights for herself and her family and is independent, loud, and anything but obedient (at least Maxines version of the tale is). Maxines mother told her that she would grow up to be a wife and slave, but at the same time, she taught me the song of the warrior woman, Fa Mu Lan. I would have to grow up to be a warrior woman, (Kingston 20). As well, Maxines mothers actions are akin to the warrior woman Fa Mu Lan. When Maxines mothers sister Moon Orchid, they call her comes to America, Maxines mother forces Moon Orchid to confront her husband. Moon Orchids husband lives in America and has married a new wife. He had been sending money

19 back to China for Moon Orchid but had not brought her to America. Maxines mother called Brave Orchid yells for Moon Orchid to hunt down her husband. You have to ask him why he didnt come home. Why he turned into a barbarian. Make him feel bad about leaving his mother and father. Scare him. Walk right into his house with your suitcases and boxes. Move right into the bedroom. Throw her [the second wifes] stuff out of the drawers and put yours in. Say, I am the first wife, and she is our servant, (Kingston 126). These brazen urgings directly contradict with the meek expected character of the Chinese female and the Chinese wife. Brave Orchid is urging Moon Orchid to stand up for herself and her rights women do not have rights according to the Confucian ideal. Brave Orchid acts in contradiction to the No Name Woman story and the Confucian thoughts. Brave Orchid tells Maxine the No Name story to scare her into submission, but acts in the fashion of a warrior woman and even teaches Maxine the warrior womans song so that Maxine will never submit. From the No Name story, we see the oppression that Maxine faces being forgotton forever. And fed that kind of sexist thinking thinking that condemns a woman for having a child out of wedlock, without even knowing if it is her fault (it could have been rape), but condemning simply because that woman was a woman fed that kind of thinking since birth, it is amazing how much Maxine fights the idea of a submissive woman. In truth, she must fight because of the Fa Mu Lan story and the example her mother sets. This fight within Maxine is at first only seen in her thoughts. Through her thoughts, Maxine imagines the No Name auntss life before death Maxine imagines an aunt that lives out her own desires for freedom as best she can in such an oppressive society Maxine sees herself in the aunt. Unless I see her life branching into mine, she gives me no ancestral help, (Kingston 8). Considering all possibilities of her No Name aunt

20 and her lover, Maxine wonders things like, It could very well have been, however, that my aunt did not take subtle enjoyment of her friend, but, a wild woman, kept rollicking company. Imagining her free with sex doesnt fit, though. I dont know any women like that, or men either, (Kingston 8) and, I hope that the man my aunt loved appreciated a smooth brow, that he wasnt just a tits-and-ass man, (Kingston 9). These thoughts differ wildly from her mothers and the intended impact of the story. Instead of pondering on her own choices and thinking on how to evade a mans attentions out of wedlock, Kingston goes so far as to try and identify the type of relationship the No Name aunt had with her illegitimate lover, defying the Confucian ideal and dreaming of freedom. Kingston, in her imaginings, identifies herself with her aunt in other ways as well. She thinks about her aunts pull over men, Even as her hair lured her imminent lover, many other men looked at her. Uncles, cousins, nephews, brothers would have looked, too, (Kingston 10), and her own pull over men, I had no idea, though, how to make attraction selective (Kingston 12). To Maxines mind she and the aunt are alike in their confusion (on how to make attractiveness singular to one man). As well, Maxine believes the two face the same constant oppression while trying to find tiny ways to elude it, and to be free. Fear at the enormities of the forbidden kept her desires delicate, wire and bone, (Kingston 8) Maxines aunt and Maxine herself feel the oppression and keep their desires small. To want too much would border action, and to take action would be to fall into disgrace. On a farm near the sea, a woman who tended her appearance reaped a reputation for eccentricity, (Kingston 9) hair style - another extravagance and freedom that women were not allowed. But Maxine and the No Name aunt found quiet ways to express oneself. At the mirror my aunt combed individuality into her bob. A bun could have been contrived to escape into black streamers blowing in the wind or in quiet wisps about her face (Kingston 9). Maxine relates herself to the No Name

21 aunt, and in doing so shows her desire for freedom and expression of self. These mental expressions, because of her mothers warrior song, prove that the need to overcome oppression exists within her. Though the above shows the expression of Maxines mothers words in a feminist way, Maxine is also influenced by the flip side the oppression imbued in the No Name Woman story and because of this other influence we see a conflict within Maxine. Because of her mothers tales and actions, Maxine is willful enough to desire a life of freedom, but again because of her mothers tales, she comprehends the magnitude of the consequences for leading such a life, and is genuinely afraid of them. The effects of these two conflicting lessons are again seen in Maxines thoughts. As if it came from an atavism deeper than fear, I used to add brother silently to boys names. It hexed the boys, who would or would not ask me to dance, and made them less scary and as familiar and deserving of benevolence as girls, (Kingston 12). Afraid of what might happen, Maxine disables all boys and makes them brothers. When they are brothers, she cannot endanger her family or herself because they cannot be thought of as possible dates, but rather, as siblings. Maxine, upon meeting a boy, automatically falls in line with Chinese feminine expectations and does not even consider a relationship. At the same time, her need for freedom because of the Fa Mu Lan story hexes her view of marriage (although marriage is bleak to begin with, Maxines desires make it more so). To be married is to give up freedom, freedom to express oneself, freedom to be independent, and freedom to simply be ones own self. From childhood onward the descriptions of marriage that she is given are less than satisfactory. at their weddings they displayed themselves in their long hair for the last time. It brushed the backs of my knees, my mother tells me. It was braided, and even so, it brushed the backs of my knees, (Kingston 9). Maxines mother tells Maxine of the last time she had freedom, after

22 marriage the hair is cut and worn in no nonsense styles that stripped women of their individuality. No longer long and free, it is worn in practical buns and short bobs their hair is controlled, just as their husbands control the married women. Women besides Maxines mother also tell of the folly of marriage, Walking home the noisy women shook their old heads and sang a folk song that made them laugh uproariously: Marry a rooster, follow a rooster. Marry a dog, follow a dog. Married to a cudgel, married to a pestle, Be faithful to it. Follow it, (Kingston 193). For Maxine, marriage is the equivalent of becoming a slave. In marriage she would be forced to follow her husbands will, and give up her own individuality. And so Maxine finds herself at odds; to risk damnation by her family or to submit her spirit and freedom. This battle between oppression and freedom, the two conflicting tales from her mother, plays out much later in Maxines life during her senior year of high school her parents begin bringing suitors to the laundry. Suddenly a series of new workers showed up at the laundry; they each worked for a week before they disappeared. They ate with us. They talked Chinese with my parents. They did not talk to us. We were to call them Elder Brother, although they were not related to us, (Kingston 193). To Maxine this must seem a sort of death sentence a killing of all the things that make Maxine and a creating of all the things she dreads - marriage. The presence of these male suitors is the final test. Their presence forces Maxine to choose between her desire for freedom and her feminism, and her familys acceptance.

23 My mother took one home from the laundry, and I saw him looking over our photographs. This one, he said, picking up my sisters picture. No. No, said my mother. This one, my picture. The oldest first, she said. Good. I would protect my sister and myself at the same time. As my parents and the FOB sat talking at the kitchen table, I dropped two dishes. I found my walking stick and limped across the floor. I twisted my mouth and caught my hand in the knots of my hair. I spilled soup on the FOB when I handed him his bowl. She can sew, though, I heard my mother say, and sweep. I raised dust swirls sweeping around and under the FOBs chairvery bad luck because spirits live inside the broom. I put on my shoes with the open flaps and flapped about like a Wino ghost. From then on, I wore these shoes to parties, whenever the mothers gathered to talk about marriages. (Kingston 194) And in the end, feminism wins out. All the conflict before the FOB (fresh off the boat a slang term for foreigners new to America) arrives, where Maxine contemplates the fate of her No Name aunt and adds brother silently to the end of every boys name, all this takes place only in Maxines mind. The small but significant actions of dropping dishes, limping, spilling soup, sweeping oddly, and flapping about like a Wino ghost prove that Maxine could stand up for her feminist beliefs. And the fact that Maxine was able to rise above the threatened consequences that befell the No Name woman and evade marriage to deliberately take action against it, and not only think thoughts proves The Woman Warriors feminist message. Yes, Maxines actions are not exactly in direct defiance of the suitors or of the oppression, but the fact alone that she was able to take physical action against such terrible consequences, being forgotten forever and not just ponder as she did with the No Name aunt story, the boys in her

24 class, and marriage shows that Maxine was able to overcome her fear in favor of individual freedom. Because Maxine is able to take physical action, the book in essence urges all women to take action. A woman cannot submit to the oppression that others would have her fall under, she must stand up for herself. At this point, the book seems to be advocating that women should overcome all oppression everywhere and without doubt or hesitation. This is true, but the book also proves that this message is only an ideal. In real life women falter, and cannot always live by their ideals. No husband of mine will say, I could have been a drummer, but I hat to think about the wife and kids. You know how it is. Nobody supports me at the expense of his own adventure. Then I get bitter: no one supports me; I am not loved enough to be supported. That I am not a burden has to compensate fro the sad envy when I look at women loved enough to be supported. Even now China wraps double binds around my feet. (Kingston 48) At first Maxine stands by her convictions, but then grows doubtful. Even though Maxine was able to stand up for herself that one time, she still has trouble (Johnson 81). Self-doubt and longing for love and a family tempt Maxine to stray away from her feminist ideals, but through taking things a day at a time, she remains herself and does not submit to the easy way out. For Maxine could never be happy with a relationship where she did not support herself, otherwise she wouldve married one of the Elder Brothers. Still, Maxine has to reaffirm her beliefs in feminism everyday just as she must redefine her Chinese and American selves day by day. Above lies the feminist message of the novel as it applies to Maxine alone, but I would like to examine the overall Chinese treatment of women and how this novels feminist message

25 applies to that as well. Yes, Maxine is Chinese and so the expectations she are presented with in the novel are logically also Chinese, but at the same time, Maxines experiences are unique to her life and taking the book alone does not prove the novels feminist message to be a universal one. Ya-Jie Zhang, a visiting professor from the Peoples Republic of China published an article on The Woman Warrior in 1986 (Wong 5). Through her article we do see that The Woman Warriors feminist message is a universal one. Zhang states, I am ashamed to admit that negative feelings for women have not been completely wiped out from Chinese minds (Zhang 19). She goes on to say that although times have changed since the stereotype of the No Name woman, these times are still hard on women. Nowadays, thanks to the open door policy, I can see a great many young men and women holding hands, embracing, or even kissing each other on the streets or on a bus. Such public displays were impossible ten years ago and even criminal in olden times. I happen to think it delightful that our young people can feel free to show their affection openly. Yet, how many people are throwing a disapproving glance at them, thinking in their small minds what a cheap girl. Some even voice such thought in an undertone. However, never does one say, What a cheap boy, (Zhang 19). Just as Maxines village dealt with the No Name Aunt, some people in China automatically assume the worst about the cheap girl. Still today, some Chinese people condemn women without even thinking about it. To a lesser extent, yes, but they do still condemn. Zhang goes on to praise Maxine for telling the story of the No Name aunt, and questions how many other No Name aunts are there whose stories remain untold. The Woman Warriors feminist message is universal it is necessary for Chinese women to rise up against oppression and tell their stories

26 so they do not become the No Name aunts. They do not have to be the ideal, but can try and do as Maxine does to try each day to accomplish their goal. Once again, we must identify our influences (in Maxines case the No Name Woman, Fa Mu Lan, and her mother), define them (Maxine decides for feminism), and act upon them (Maxine stands up to the FOB). And in this case, it is not a sense of peace that will be achieved, rather a sense of freedom freedom that is every womans right to have, and within every womans ability if she just follows Maxines example. The feminist lens is able to identify specifically that the feminist issues in The Woman Warrior. This approach provides a blatant feminist message that is well supported by the novel and the authors experiences. But just as the formalist lens bore the flaw of being too general/simplistic, the feminist lens bears the flaw of being too specific. In an interview, Maxine stated, I was very concerned when The Woman Warrior came out right at the height of the feminist movement, and everyone saw my work as being the epitome of a feminist book. I felt really mad about that because thats not all it is, (Kingston 34). The novel is not only a feminist book, and looking at it only from a feminist perspective cuts out much of the novel rather than glossing over as the formalist did, feminist simply does not deal with much of the book. And as stated before, The Woman Warrior is like a person with many influences and issues present. To exclude one issue or many issues is to exclude part or parts of a person part or parts of Maxine. Therefore, the feminist is in no way complete in analyzing the book. Although the feminist critique does present a valid argument, it must be understood that it is only a piece of the whole. As Formalist was the trunk of the tree, the feminist is merely a branch both have meaning, function, and value on their own, but are not as valuable as the entire tree. To give more context to the book, a new historical lens can also be applied. A persons influences

27 include their history, and Maxine was definitely influenced by history her ancestors and her parents experiences with the national level changes in both California and China. Thus, a new historical lens may prove insightful. The following new historical critique seeks to answer two questions in the novel; what historical and social issues are reflected in the novel, and what does the book say about these issues? Conflict and culture shock, guilt and desire, freedom and obligation, hatred and bigotry, these are things that Maxine Hong Kingston was forced to deal with while growing up in Stockton, California: San Franciscos Chinatown. And while The Woman Warrior portrays her unique experience, in many ways, the book also chronicles a chapter in Chinese-American history. Homesick and longing for the familiar, Chinese immigrants, from the first Chinese man to immigrate to the ones that immigrated during Maxines childhood, created a shell around themselves in Chinatown. To the Chinese, Chinatown became a place where one could feel as if he or she were still living in China despite the American prejudices against them and the inhumane working conditions. Chinatown ran along three major streets, Stockton, Dupont and Kearney, and was about six blocks long. Although they were newcomers to a foreign land, the Chinese continued to maintain traditional values and ways as they gradually established their own ethnic ghetto of Chinatown Although there was a Chinese hospital, the distrust of western things ran so deep that most Chinese only went to the hospital when death was unavoidable (San Franciscos Chinatown). This shell was feared (for we fear what we do not know) and impenetrable. Kingston, by writing The Woman Warrior reveals the effects of immigration laws targeting Chinese, of Communist China and the Red Scare, and of a distrustful America on a Chinese family in Chinatown, breaks

28 this shell. Taking a new historical approach and by first delving into the history and social issues surrounding The Woman Warrior and the circumstances of Maxines childhood, we can see how this history and these issues manifested themselves and how they left a scar on the ChineseAmerican community. Today, Chinatown is a tourist location. A must see on any vacation to San Francisco. Buses stop, the eager tourists leave their air-conditioned, cushioned, comfortable seats for a few hours to take snapshots and eat at a restaurant. But this phenomenon of tourism is merely a shadow of the historical Chinatown - a Chinatown that dealt with the real issues of everyday life. Soon however, the Chinese found themselves trapped in segregation because they had become the targets of a tidal wave of racism. The San Francisco Chronicle described Chinatown as a filthy nest of iniquity and rottenness in our midst. Hoodlums enforced this segregation, beating up Chinese they found outside of Chinatown and taking their queues, or braids, as trophies, (The Clash of Two Worlds). Anything but a tourist location, Chinatown was at the center of hatred. This hatred, although for the most part is dead now, actually began over a century ago. After the invention of railroads came a pressing need for the first transcontinental railroad. Throughout 1869, with the Union Pacific Railroad company building from the east, the Central Pacific began building from the West (Conigliaro), the companies competed to get to the middle of the nation, a race that caught the whole nations attention. To beat the eastern Union Pacific, the Central Pacific began employing Chinese men. These men worked extremely fast at very low wages, thereby taking jobs that would have otherwise gone to Americans. This combined with the Gold Rush the Chinese that were supposedly sending too much gold back to China they [Americans] believed that wealth should remain within the United States (The Chinese Exclusion Act: A Black Legacy) created a very anti-Chinese feeling among Americans.

29 Finally, in 1882 these sentiments gained enough support to be made into national legislation. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a climax of more than thirty years of progressive racism (The Chinese Exclusion Act: A Black Legacy). The only legislation to ever be directed at a specific ethnicity, it was initially a ten-year policy, made permanent in 1902. However, immigration continued. The exclusion laws were frequently evaded and illegal immigrants thrived. An earthquake and its resulting fires in 1906 destroyed all files containing information about Chinese immigrants. After this, any Chinese person living in San Francisco could claim citizenship, thus enabling Chinese to adopt false identities and immigrate to their American relatives. With so many Chinese sneaking past the immigration laws, the city of San Francisco finally created a detainment center on Angel Island in 1910. Much more like a prison, immigrants were subjected to grueling questions about their heritage and their immigration papers, stuck on the island for weeks and sometimes months or even years. Those that finally did immigrate were treated inhumanely, Many of their customs and traditions were violated, they were insulted, they were imprisoned, beat, and in some cases killed, (The Chinese Exclusion Act: A Black Legacy). Even though immigration was so difficult, and the antiChinese feelings were very strong, Chinese continued to immigrate to America because the fact remained that the opportunities in America were better. In 1924, the Exclusion Act was enlarged, The year 1924 was when the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was expanded to exclude all Asians from entry as immigrants, even Chinese alien wives of U.S. citizens, (Li 199). Now, Asians were completely cut off from entry. Finally in 1943, the Act was repealed. However, the Act was not repealed because feelings against Chinese lessened; it was repealed because China became an ally of Americas during World War Two. In the fight against Japan, America

30 needed the cooperation of China and its aid, in an effort to keep the ties between governments friendly, America repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The legal and societal discrimination against Chinese did not end with the Exclusion Act. From the 1950s until the early 1970s and the dismantling of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Chinese in America were persecuted for their homelands political affiliation. In 1949, China was declared a Peoples Republic, and entered the Korean War indirectly against America in 1950. While all this happened on a national scale, in Chinatown of San Francisco, the Red Scare also had a huge impact. For Chinese Americans, the Red Scare meant they couldnt send money to relatives in China, speak positively of their homeland or reaffirm their ethnic identity. Families were divided, jobs were lost and people were jailed. And perhaps more significantly, and entire community withdrew from society in hopes that anonymity and submission might assuage government suspicion (Kim). The Chinese people in America were once again subjugated to fear and suspicion, and once again they retreated into their stronghold of Chinatown. Felicia Lowe, producer and director of a critically acclaimed documentary featured in a series (Neighborhoods: the Hidden Cities of San Francisco) called Chinatown talks about Chinatown, Historically, everything about being Chinese in America had boundaries around it, a kind of fence that you couldnt go beyond. So Chinatown became the fortress, its own world the people re-created their own America within those crowded blocks where there was no choice but to survive on your own, (Lowe). And while this of the outside American world fear may seem out of proportion, all words and no action, this is not true. Action did take place, laundry workers also arrested and eventually convicted for sending money home to their families in China (Kim). Constantly afraid of

31 deportation, jail, and racism, the Chinese in America faced a desperate situation that was only tolerated because the situation in China was much worse. At least if you were in America, you could send money to your family even if you risked deportation or jail, that money sent home was worth it. Finally in 1972, President Richard Nixon visited China and paved the way for open relations between the two countries (Kim). The fear in Chinatown subsided, but the feeling of racism and communism inspired anger lingered. Hatred so ingrained for such a long time could not be wiped away with one visit. To this day, people are still very afraidIts not like anything can happen to them but there is the fear of the unknown. Once youve been targeted, youre always very suspicious, (Kim). Throughout the Gold Rush, the railroad race, the earthquakes and fires, World War II, the Korean War, and the Red Scare, Chinatown remained a stronghold of Chinese tradition and a home base for Chinese immigrants. As Felicia Lowe says, San Franciscos Chinatown was the first foothold of Chinese in the United States and is still a cultural touchstone, (Lowe). As well, throughout this turmoil, Maxines family lived in Chinatown. Her father immigrated right before the expansion of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1924, and her mother could not immigrate until its repeal in 1943. Maxine was born soon after their reunion, and lived through both the immigration scares imprinted in Chinese-American minds because of the Exclusion Act and the fear of Communism during the fifties and sixties. By looking at Maxines specific experiences with both these social issues by taking a new historical stance we can see that the racist actions of America left a scar on the Chinese people causing a boundary between the races that was still strong during the seventies and eighties.

32 Although the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, illegal immigrants and fear of deportation still ruled over Chinese thought. Maxine discusses this fear as it affected her family and her community. Occasionally a rumor went around that the United States immigration authorities had set up headquarters in the San Francisco or Sacramento Chinatown to urge wetbacks and stowaways, anybody here on fake papers, to come to the city and get their files straightened out. The immigrants discussed not whether or not to turn themselves in. We might as well, somebody would say. Then wed have our citizenship for real. Dont be a fool, somebody else would say. Its a trap. You go in there saying you want to straighten out your papers, theyll deport you. No they wont. Theyre promising that nobody is going to jail or get deported. Theyll give you citizenship as a reward for turning yourself in, for your honesty. Dont you believe it. So-and-so trusted them, and he was deported. They deported his children too, (Kingston 184). So-and-so trusted them. The use of so-and-so suggests that this is a common incident that the fear of Americans was common. With rumors circulating through Chinatown fear as well, the immigrants discussed whether or not they should turn themselves in. Ultimately deciding not to because their mistrust and fear of the Westerners runs so deep. Maxines parents especially support this division between the Americans and Chinatown, Dont tell, advised my parents. Dont go to San Francisco until they leave, (Kingston 184). This belief, that Americans were out to get you and would deport you in a second must have been fed to Chinese children all over

33 Chinatown, and probably all over America as well. And that fear, it did not stop at simply being fear, it was also an action: the fear caused the Chinese-Americans to shut down around Americans, As a culture, we were taught to have a low profile, to become invisible. Something was lost to us because of that. But it's the kind of thing you learn when you are subjected to the kind of racial attacks we were, said Felicia Lowe. Maxine as well learned not to trust the Americans; she learned how to hide the truth even when she did not want to. when I saw Fathers occupations I exclaimed, Hey, he wasnt a farmer, he was a He had been a gambler. My throat cut off the wordsilence in front of the most understanding teacher. Three were secrets never to be said in front of ghosts, immigration secrets whose telling could get us sent back to China, (Kingston 183). Whether or not being a gambler could actually get her family deported is irrelevant, the point is that they believed it could. This belief that you had to always be on your guard, and always defending yourself was large enough that Maxine could not tell the most understanding teacher the truth years of fear and racism could not be overcome. Her parents told her again and again, Lie to the Americans. Tell them you were born during the San Francisco earthquake. Tell them your birth certificate and your parents were burned up in the fire. Dont report crimes; tell them we have no crimes and no poverty. Give a new name every time you get arrested; the ghosts wont recognize you. Pay the new immigrants twenty-five cents an hour and say we have no unemployment. And, of course, tell them were against Communism (Kingston 184). The fear runs so deep that everything becomes a lie, everything becomes what the Americans want to hear. And of course, tell them were against Communism, (184) added as an

34 afterthought, implies just how obvious this last command is, how intrinsic. For as much as fear of deportation runs rampant, fear of Communist inspired anger must be worse. Not only were the Chinese-Americans persecuted during the Red Scare for Chinas political affiliations, but Chinese-American people were also persecuted for sending money back to their relatives in China. The purpose of most Chinese in America was to do just that, send money home. But with the Red Scare and the House Un-American Activities Committee looming overhead, they legally could not act on their purpose they could be sent to jail for sending money home. But at the same time, they couldnt not send money home; to do so would be to deny their upbringing. In Chinese culture, ruled by Confucian ideals, ancestors and elders must be respected and taken care of, and to not send money would be in direct defiance of these values and Chinese heritage. Expounding the need for money was the Communist rule of China, families would get letters from their relatives, in which the relatives would describe their horrible circumstances under communist rule, and beg for money. So the Chinese immigrants did what they could, they lived in fear of jail and sent the money anyway. Maxines family dealt with these issues just as every other Chinese family must have. I was nine years old when the letter made my parents, who are rocks, cry. My father screamed in his sleep. My mother wept and crumpled up the letters. letters said that my uncles were made to kneel on broken glass during their trials and had confessed to being landowners. They were all executed, and the aunt whose thumbs were twisted off drowned herself. Other aunts, mothers-in-law, and cousins disappeared; some suddenly began writing to us again from communes or from Hong Kong. They kept asking for money, (Kingston 50).

35 The peasant class of China rose up against anything that even seemed to represent a landowner the class that had suppressed them for years. Maxines family is labeled as such and is executed in cruel ways. This devastates her parents, and they do the best they can. But as Maxines mother states, They dont understand that we have ourselves to feed too, (Kingston 206). Maxines family does the best they can, they work like dogs in their laundry business and send as much money as they can back to China. Even after Maxine grows up and moves away, even after the need for Maxines mother to work subsides, Maxines mother continues to work and sends everything she earns back to China. My mother sends money she earns working in tomato fields to Hong Kong. (Kingston 205). America forced its Chinese immigrants to choose between loyalty to America (obeying the law) and loyalty to their Chinese relatives. The Chinese-Americans obviously chose their relatives, causing a divide between Chinese and America that ran deep and long they never should have been required to make that decision in the first place. This is the America that Chinese immigrants had to deal with one where they lived in constant fear, where they could receive terrible letters from relatives begging for money, but could not legally respond as they desired. This America, It forced Chinese not to take a stand on anything It forced them to be silent and unwilling to speak out, (Kim). In other words, it created a shell around Chinatown a shell that could not be broken because of years of hatred, racism, and fear. This shell existed for a long time, but through the efforts of Maxine Hong Kingston and the history behind her, a crack was made, and it began to break. By telling the story of her life the life of a Chinese-American, Maxine bridged the silence between American and Chinese. She chooses not one culture, but both, and in embracing both, forces the reader to embrace both. Felicia Lowe, in her documentary Chinatown was also able to crack this shell,

36 and she tells us what kind of story the Chinatown story is, what kind of story she looked for in her documentary, and what kind of story Maxines was, I began asking people to tell their stories. All the time I had this profound sense of having to tell the stories to a world that never heard them before. It boggles my mind to think that these people lived an American life in an America that basically said we don't want you, (Lowe). She goes on to say how hard it is to get this story, Young Chinese Americans hardly have an idea of what it means for an older resident of Chinatown to be asked to speak publicly about life there - it's ingrained that you don't go beyond the boundaries, (Lowe). Maxine Hong Kingston was able to go beyond these boundaries, she was able to identify who she was as both an American and a Chinese and who she was as a woman. Maxine Hong Kingston took a history of racism and bigotry and created a breathtaking novel of self-discovery. The novel, by identifying the gaps between Americans and Chinese-Americans asks us, the readers, to bridge those gaps in hopes of a better future for Chinese-American relations. Just as Maxine was forced to identify herself in context with American and China, and was forced to rise up against oppression and define herself as a woman, by writing her book and cracking the shell, Kingston is forcing the reader to deal with the oppression of America and to redefine who he or she may be as an American or as an immigrant. We must tell the stories of our lives, we must effect change, and we cannot abandon our true selves and drift. Who we are in terms of culture and ethnicity, gender, and even as either the bigot or the stereotype of that bigotry Maxine Hong Kingston, in The Woman Warrior declares that we must deal with these issues evaluate our influences and define ourselves and ultimately act upon them with conviction. The New Historical approach to The Woman Warrior, does answer the questions it sets out to. The historical issue reflected in the book is ultimately the racist treatment of Chinese, and

37 the book ultimately defines this treatment as bad. So in the respect that it answers basic new historical questions, yes the critique is sound. But, while the critique does explain the feelings of mistrust generated by Maxines parents towards Westerners, it also cuts out much of the mysticism of the novel. Some might argue that this is a good thing that losing the ethereal qualities of the novel allows for better understanding, however this is not so. A cut and dry version of The Woman Warrior as offered by the new historical lens cannot show the beauty and poetry of Kingstons writing. In the formalist and feminist critiques, even after the lens was applied, one was able to retain a sense of the intricacy and fancy in the book, whereas the new historical cuts all that out. And while the intricacy and fancy may seem useless, it actually serves a purpose. It identifies the quality in which Maxine grew up it adds a dimension to the book. The mere style of writing in prose even though the book is technically an autobiography is fundamental to the novel. This method shows that history and therefore this book are in a way, a product of our imagination. Memory only goes so far as your ability to recall and imagine that moment within your mind goes. Kingston, by writing non-fiction in a fiction format addresses this issue. But the new historical approach treats the novel as only history, and treating the book as history alone leaves out much of Kingstons intentions. As I stated in the opening, things forbidden and untold things exciting and interesting cannot be told as effectively or with as much meaning when they are told within the strict definitions of fiction and non-fiction. Ultimately, it is obvious that Kingstons autobiography cannot be dealt with any one critical lens. Each lens leaves something to be had, just as a person cannot be defined by only one influence or idea, Maxines autobiography cannot be defined by only one critical lens. Only after examining the novel under all three critical lenses formalist, feminist, and new historical are we able to gain a sense of the complete novel (although this is still not total, there are still

38 many issues which these three approaches do not identify and examine). Just as a person can only be understood completely by understanding all parts of them their values, their beliefs, and their history The Woman Warrior can only be understood after examining it in all lights. At the same time, however, we must examine whether or not this lack is a bad thing; the point of a critical lens is to simplify the book and shed light on it for a specific matter. The flaw that holds true for the critical lenses applied to The Woman Warrior must hold true for all critical lenses none are able to give a complete evaluation of the book. But this is not the point of a critical lens, each lens is meant to highlight specific issues. So, in the end, the critical lenses applied in this discussion of The Woman Warrior can be useful or not, it depends on the individuals need. If one is looking for an in-depth analysis of the entire book, then the lenses are only partially useful, but if one is looking in depth analysis of specific issues, then yes the lenses are very useful (the lenses being accurate in both cases). However, in any frame of mind or need, at the end of all analysis, we do find a beautifully constructed book in The Woman Warrior. A seemingly simple, yet raw, tale of a Chinese-Americans childhood, under closer observation we see that Maxine writes in deep undercurrents of conflict, issues of identity, gender pressures, and societal mistakes. Kingston pushes the reader into a world of talk-story, where the reader must decide for him or herself what the truth is. At the end of the book, the reader is left with the sense that Maxine knows what her truth is, but it is up to each and every one of us to define the truth for ourselves. Who a person is his or her experiences, his or her culture, and his or her convictions all is swirled into one mass of blood, muscle, and gray matter. And Maxine, by writing this book, defines her mass of blood, muscle, and gray matter and gives it meaning, gives it a soul. By doing this, she challenges us to do the same, who are we? Who am I? In comparison to the brutal self-examination and conflict within Maxine, I am

39 still only blood, muscle, and gray matter. Hopefully, by evaluating my own influences, defining them, and finally acting upon them, I too can have a soul. I hope that my soul will be even close to the beauty of Maxines soul as revealed in The Woman Warrior.

40 Works Cited Brownmiller, Susan. Susan Browmiller Talks with Maxine Hong Kingston, Author of The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior; A Casebook. Ed. Sau-ling Cynthia Wong. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1999. 173-179 Chang, Jung. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. NewYork: Bantam Doubleday, 1991 Fulton, Jessica. Holding up Half the Heavens: The Effect of Communist Rule on Chinas Women. Undergraduate Research Journal; Vol. III. 2000. Indiana University South Bend. 5 Jun. 2005. < http://www.iusb.edu/~journal/2000/fulton.html> Johnson, Diane. Ghosts. Critical Essays on Maxine Hong Kingston. Ed. Laura E. SkanderaTrombeley. New York, NY: G. K. Hall & Co., 1998. 81 Kim, Ryan. Keeping Tabs On Chinatown; Premiering documentary shows how Red Scare cast pall of suspicion on an entire community. SFGate.com. 10 Mar. 2001. San Francisco Chronicle. 5 Jun. 2005. <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/chronicle/archive/2001/03/10/MN116573.DTL> Kingston, Maxine Hong. A Conversation with Maxine Hong Kingston. Critical Essays on Maxine Hong Kingston. Ed. Laura E. Skandera-Trombeley. New York, NY: G. K. Hall & Co., 1998. 34 Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. New York: Random House, Inc., 1976. Li, Davied Leiwei. Re-presenting The Woman Warrior: As Essay of Interpretive History. Critical Essays on Maxine Hong Kingston. Ed. Laura E. Skandera-Trombeley. New York, NY: G. K. Hall & Co., 1998. 182-203 Lowe, Felicia. Chinatown; Interview with Producer/Director Felicia Lowe. 5 Jun. 2005. <http://www.kqed.org/w/hood/chinatown/ctinterview.html> San Franciscos Chinatown. Menlo School, Atherton, CA. 5 Jun. 2005. <http://sun.menloschool.org/~mbrody/ushistory/angel/mixing/map.html> Small, Meredith F. Our Babies, Ourselves. Find Articles. 2005. Natural History. 29 May 2005 <http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_n9_v106/ai_20135599#continue> Shu, Yuan. Cultural politics and Chinese-American female subjectivity: rethinking Kingston's Woman Warrior - Critical Essay. Find Aritcles. 2005. MELUS. 5 Jun. 2005. <http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2278/is_2_26/ai_80852625#continue> The Chinese Exclusion Act: A Black Legacy. Menlo School, Atherton, CA. 5 Jun. 2005. < http://sun.menloschool.org/~mbrody/ushistory/angel/exclusion_act/>

41 The Clash of Two Worlds. Menlo School, Atherton, CA. 5 Jun. 2005. <http://sun.menloschool.org/~mbrody/ushistory/angel/mixing/> Zhang, Ya-Jie. A Chinese Womens Response to Maxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior. Maxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior; A Casebook. Ed. Sau-ling Cynthia Wong. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1999. 19-21

(Source: Joanne S. Frye, "The Woman Warrior: Claiming Narrative Power, Recreating Female Selfhood," in Faith of a (Woman) Writer, edited by Alice Kessler-Harris and William McBrien, Greenwood Press, 1988.)