Sunday, July 18, 2010
Woman Warrior Reader Response!
I feel Woman Warrior, as a whole was an interesting book I just simply didn’t understand some of the transitions. I understand that Kingston was giving a mixture of her own life events and old Chinese folk tales but I feel that if one doesn’t research the book a bit book reading, like I didn’t, then they will definitely be confused on more than one occasion. Until one figures out that the narration changes along with the story being told then they will be lost. I feel that if I had looked at some facts about the book prior to reading it I would have been able to get a lot more out of it. One aspect I found very interesting is that she called every non-Chinese person a ghost of some sort. Not only could this be considered offensive but also it is also somewhat disturbing. To think that one considers all others dissimilar from their selves to be “non human” or a ghost is not healthy. The characters act as though they cannot be heard or assimilate to the ghosts and if one does assimilate then they are considered part ghost. I found the whole thing interesting because usually discrimination goes towards one certain race and ethnicity to isolate but the Chinese people in the book did the exact opposite and isolated their selves. Another aspect I found interesting was the amount of gender roles used in the book. The girls were the week individuals even though Kingston directly talks of the greatest warrior to be a female the girls are still considered burdens and only they cause the problems and only they are the crazy ones. Starting with the non-names aunt that killed herself and her baby by jumping in the well to the crazy aunt that thought the Mexicans were after her, the girls had mostly all the problems with the exception of the crazy boy with dirty magazines. I feel this is definitely a reoccurring theme throughout the book and I am sure it is intentional.
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I too researched, because of the article presentation "No Name Woman" that I am presenting. I also found that all outsiders were considered ghosts. I believe this too be because of the superstitions the Chinese people at the time faced as a way to protect themselves from the outside world, as they were at some time brainwashed by rulers into submission. Especially the women, as they were told what to do by the men and kept silent about things that happened to them in the villages. What was great was that Kingston's mother used "talk stories" to help educate her about the dangers that she might confront in life. Like the story about the Aunt and the baby in the well. This taught Kingston to be careful about marriage out of wedlock. Then KIngston goes on to establish that the greatest punishment for the Aunt is that no one speak her name, as if she doesn't exist. We never really find out what exactly happened to the Aunt, but we can speculate because Kingston uses first, second, and third narrative language to enable her readers to "think about it." The talk story about the Fa Mu Lan helps Kingston identify with breaking free from female submission and helps her to become independant. She wants to become "The Woman Warrior", but in doing so, she gets confused about her gender identity.
ReplyDeleteThis book was a great book to read. Although, In the begining of the book i was scratching my head a little bit because i didn't know what was going on. I had to look back through the first couple of chapters. This book was a cross between beloved and Indian Killer. It had racism and tension. It made the readers feel what is was like to live in the early ninteen hundreds as a Chinese American in California. All of the Chapters brought up a new topic. At the begining of each chapter i had to figure out what was going on in the story. The topic with the ghost reminded me of the holocaust. How the jews couldn't be seen or they would be killed. There were some flashbacks in this book too. Where Kingston would talk about her past. It reminded me of Beloved where she kept on going back in time. The Gender roles i noticed too how they made the men look greater than the women.
ReplyDeleteI also found the issue with ghosts very interesting. When I took a Japanese language class we worked some with the Kanji alphabet, which uses Chinese ideograms. The Kanji word for China, 中国 (Chuugoku) uses the ideograms for "middle" and "kingdom" which my teacher said is supposed to mean that the country of China is like the center of the world. So it wasn't too surprising that they would look down on people different from them. However, a lot of Americans do the same thing today. Many Americans often say "God bless America, the greatest country in the world," and want countries with different types of government to realize that they would be better if they were a bit more like us. Even back in the 50s if someone acted too different from the norm in American society that person would be accused of being a Communist that wished to overthrow our "perfect" democracy, and some would even accuse that person of being "un-American." That's not a very far cry from when Kingston's mother thought Kingston was acting too ghost-like when she started acting less like a Chinese villager.
ReplyDeleteI felt the transition from the talk-story into the dream world as very comforting. As a youngster, I would spend the night at my grandparents occasionally and my grandma would tell me stories until I fell asleep. I would have the most wonderful dreams in vivid colors and with all kinds of interesting fun things all around me. I attribute this to the world of the Dr. Seuss book being subconsiously imprinted into my mind.
ReplyDeleteAs I grew I found myself liking stories of fanciful worlds and colorful characters, mainly comic books, enjoyed art and painting weird make belive creatures, then it transformed into film later in my teen years.
I never really understood why I was always drawn (get it..."drawn"!) to these kinds of things. I now understand that by my young mind being filled in the dream world, it came true in the real world in my own way.