A. Introduction
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of A Girlhood among Ghosts is the first work of Maxine Hong Kingston in 1976, which makes her as one among the eligible feminist authors in the USA nowadays. The National Chiao-Tung University in Taiwan even praises this book as the most wanted book of the decade after winning the best fiction award at the 1976 National Book Critics Circle Award. Along with the sophomore work, China Men, this book has become a must read subject for students of literature, women’s studies, sociology, ethnic study, and the history in the USA (cc.nctu.edu.tw 1996).

Although being labeled as a memoir, The Woman Warrior is more than a pure autobiography. The story is set from her mother’s experience, a Chinese woman who migrated to the USA in 1939. Added by her own understanding and thoughts, the works turns to be a mixture between fact and fiction about American and Chinese culture.

It is told in the first person point of view that Kingston is a Chinese-American daughter who was born in Stockton, California, and raised with the Chinese customs brought from her mother, Brave Orchid. Understandably, life has been uneasy for her. Being female member in a Chinese family which lives in a ghost land (referred to the USA), she encounters many difficulties in finding her true-self during adolescence.

To illustrate the problem, we may draw a line to join the Chinese and American backgrounds of the author. Apparently she emphasizes in adapting more of the American customs that she faces more problems in dealing with her mother’s frame of mind, particularly in the term of feminism. Throughout her writing, she condemns Chinese culture in some level for being misogyny and patriarch, which then arouses protests, since she has never even seen her country of origin until years later after the book has been published.

In any case, it is difficult to separate the essence of the story with Chinese culture, since American feminism is different than Chinese. According to Cora Kaplan in A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, the western feminist critics nowadays have realized the importance of understanding a text in its relation with its own culture. As an example, we can see Kristeva’s book About Chinese Women, in which she had already been able to analyze the third world context without attributing it to international feminism. (Selden 230)

B. Analysis
The Woman Warrior, as said by Michael T. Malloy, displays the same subject as other works by most mainstream feminists in the USA. It is about “mother-daughter” genre. However, here we can see how Kingston formed her mother’s story on superstitious Chinese customs and culture, which happened to be very different from her views, to deliver her messages.

Her main purpose in The Woman Warrior seems to be telling the inequality received by Chinese women, in particular as what she has experienced within her own family or as she hears it from her mother. To her, the revelation of the facts to the world is a means of vengeance. Here is when she as the narrator opens up herself in account of her relationship with her mother and extended family.

The story begins with “No Name woman”, a narrative about a nameless aunt. This aunt, being the only sister of Kingston’s father, is with a child while her husband has been long gone to the USA. She finally commits suicide along with the infant after the villagers raid their house; on the night when the baby is born. Brave Orchid tells this stigma to young Kingston, on the day she is having her first menstruation, in hoping that she would never disgrace her family as what her aunt has done. In this matter, both mother and daughter have given up the Chinese tradition. Brave Orchid, who had avows not to share the secret to anyone, in fact opens it to her daughter on purpose that she would learn from the mistake. On the other hand, Kingston tells the long time buried secret to her readers, which would almost be an outlaw, for it is forbidden to even mention her name. Her father, as a perfect example, has never admitted that he had a sister.

Kingston herself values the path she takes as a rejection toward Chinese patriarchal policies, and also general discrimination. As a woman who was born and raised in the USA, she has tried to seek a more reasonable justification to her aunt’s pregnancy which ended with her death. To Kingston, her aunt could have been an innocent victim of gender discrimination, or there was another possibility that she flirted with another man. Although, given the time and situation, the latter was almost impossible. For that reason, she dislikes the family solution which preferred to see her aunt died and forgot what happened. Kingston viewes this case as discrimination. Her aunt had to suffer for a mistake which was not only hers. The man who impregnated her, on the contrary, was never known and he would never need to worry to be uncovered.

In the second chapter, “White Tigers”, Kingston recounts her own version on the legend of Fa Mu Lan, an infamous Chinese female warrior. This time, Fa Mu Lan kills her misogynist enemy who is very much feared on her village, and afterward choose to return to her family as a wife, daughter in law, and mother. She, as a warrior, has the options to choose, which is rarely happened to Chinese women at that time.

Like in “No Name Woman”, Kingston hears this story from her mother. A woman, as Brave Orchid has said, is always destined to be wife or slave in the end; the two choices which are not fancied by the American minded Kingston. She is certain that her mother never actually likes to see that her daughter to be one of them either. Why else would she tell the story of Fa Mu Lan? To put matters more complicated, Brave Orchid frequently repeats the story about Chinese custom to tie their daughters’ feet, and how Kingston is fortunate for not having to experience it. One thing noted from Brave Orchid, despite her aptitude in sharing stories, she never provides her stories with explanation. That is perhaps Chinese way to educate the children by interpreting the messages by themselves. Yet, Kingston is different. Brave Orchid is unaware that Kingston with her American background might not grasp her real purposes, as the stories are often full of metaphors adapted from Chinese custom. For this reason, Kingston regularly makes her own interpretations which even parts her way of thinking to her mother’s more. On this particular case, for instance, she thinks that Chinese men fears the women that it is necessary for them to tie the women’s feet.

The third story, “Shaman” is about Brave Orchid’s struggle in finding her own self. When she is young, she learns in a medical school in Canton. She was the smartest and bravest student. She even tells her story when she has to face the sitting ghost, possibly a sign referred to symbolization of traditional limitation in China at that time.

She is a feminist, seen from Chinese point of view. As it is not easy for a married woman like her to get higher education, she chooses to continue her study instead of serving her husband’s parents after he sails to the USA. She then gains outstanding grades as medical doctor.

After fifteen years living separated, she then rejoins her husband to the USA and builds their family there. She changes her image from a professional Chinese doctor to be a laundry woman, household servant and even tomatoes picker. She does quite everything to help her husband. As a good mother, she tries to make her children grow to be good people. That is a practical feminism to her. She raises her children with her stories, in hoping that they would learn from them. She is in many ways different from Kingston, for Kingston is an American girl who is free to speak her mind. Brave Orchid occasionally threatens to spank her when she would not stop crying and calls her bad girl. And she would reply that she is not a bad girl. In fact, she wants to claim in her heart that she is not at all a girl. In this case, she reflects a rejection toward Chinese sexism. She sees that badness in Chinese is connected to female. Thus, she refuses the label. She explaines about misogyny on Chinese culture as “when you have a daughter, you raise her to be given to other”. In the end, when she grows up, she changes her opinion to fulfill American standard of feminism. Yet, she still bears similarities to her mother, as she claimes: “I am a Dragon, as she is a Dragon, both of us born in Dragon years. I am practically a first daughter of a first daughter” (109).

Another conflict on the concepts of feminism, however, occurs in “At the Western Palace”, when Brave Orchid helps her sister “Moon Orchid” to confront her husband who has been living in the USA and remarries. While being accustomed to Chinese culture which allow men to marry more than once, Brave Orchid insistsd not to accept the custom in her own way:
“Brave Orchid tellsd her children they must help her keep their father from marrying another woman because she doesn’t think she could take it any better than her insane sister has. If he bring another woman into the house, they are to gang up on her and play tricks on her, hit her and trip her when she is carrying hot oil until she ran away” (160).

Although the idea of getting rid of the other woman may always be logical, it proves that a different culture background offers different outcome. Kingston, who agrees with her mother in the case of monogamy, is aware about the difference conceptions between their views on feminism. Yet, she respects her mother’s aspirations which has helped her in growing up. To explain her opinion on it, she writes in “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe”, “The beginning is hers, the ending, mine.” She means to convey that she lives in a different time and place than her mother. She believes in different customs, and she has the right over them. So, she completes her revenge to patriarchal domination on Chinese culture by revealing all about her life.

C. Conclusion
In criticizing Chinese culture, Kingston is influenced by American culture. In some level she could only see the dark side of her own ancestor’s custom. She thinks that her mother, as well as other Chinese women, will not be free as long as they stayed in China. In fact, she only interprets her mother’s subjective stories, and had never seen the country herself. Therefore, her statement in claiming her personal rebellion to her mother’s stories as a vengeance against general sexism in China is a misconception. The memoir is rather a means of correcting her life, existing what did not really exist.

As for the concept of feminism, it is different in China and the USA, and also in other places. Even though it might be based on the same idea, a further understanding on the background of the society is needed for a thorough analysis. Brave Orchid is probably a Chinese feminist in China as well as Kingston is an American feminist in the USA, and may be not be the other way around. Culture exists because it is practiced by its society. Thus, Brave Orchid’s Chinese values did not fit the social order in the USA. It is exactly the same case such as when critics in China disapprove of the way Kingston has described Chinese culture in The Woman Warrior. In a way, one cannot escape the hegemony of their society.

WORKS CITED

Feng, Pin-Chia. Maxine Hong Kingston (27 October 1940-). (1996) 1 Juli 2002. <http://www.cc.nctu.edu.tw/%7Epcfeng/CALF/ch1.htm>

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of A Girlhood among Ghosts. New York: 1976. Vintage International.

Soderstorm, Christina K. Women Writers of Color Maxine Hong Kingston. (1996. 1 Juli 2002) <http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/MaxineHongKingston.html>

This has been previously posted here on January 18, 2005