The Woman Warrior Analysis

The Woman Warrior, Memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts, combines myths with autobiography in order to explore Kingston’s identify formation in relation to her mother and female relatives. Kingston uses the first person to narrate five distinct short stories. Each of them contains a central female character. The unique feature of this book is the rearrangement of the traditional Chinese myths, legend of Fa Mu Lan and Ts’ai Yen. The combination of fact and fiction and the combination of reality and fantasy closely intertwine in the stories. Critical use of Chinese myths in the Woman Warrior shows a sharp contrast with Kingston’s real life in America and accentuates the equality between women and men. In Chapter two of the Woman Warrior, Kingston presents the story by using Fa Mu Lan as an archetype to display the heroine image of “I”. Fa Mu Lan disguises as a man and takes her father’s
There is a cause-and-effect relationship between No Name Woman and White Tigers. In No Name Women, a nameless aunt becomes notorious and outcast. She finally cannot take much pressure anymore and commits suicide when she gives birth to an illegitimate child. Telling the death of the nameless aunt to Kingston, her mother warns Kingston that “now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful.” (P5) The nameless aunt seems to have no relationship with Kingston, but it reminds Kingston about her community in America. On one hand, her mother brackets them together because she has a negative attitude toward the woman’s role in Chinese society. On the other hand, people who live around Kingston still follow the conservative thoughts just like the villagers. They degrade women’s role in the society and limit women’s freedom. Kingston grows up with the conflicts of two different