Woman Warrior Character Analysis

Clash Before Harmony
“Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested out strength to establish realities. Those in the emigrant generation who could not reassert brute survival died young and far from home. Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America”(5). Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior tells the story of Maxine’s childhood as the first American-born child in her Chinese family. In her transition from her Chinese household to the American culture and world around her, Maxine finds it difficult to fit in with both cultures. In Woman Warrior, Kingston uses
Before Maxine yells at her family, she describes her vocal cords as "taught to snapping." She tries to tell her mother a confession every day, perhaps to ease her vocal cords off slowly and gradually, but when her mother tells her she doesn't want Maxine to continue telling her secrets each night Maxine stops. As she grows increasingly frustrated at her situation, the man sitting in the laundry comes in and sets her over the edge. She says, "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 stood up, talking and burbling"(200-201). By describing her patience breaking as her throat bursting open, it emphasizes the extent to which Maxine feels she needs to use her voice. She describes her actions as "talking and burbling," creating the sense that she is overflowing with words, unsure of exactly where they will lead her as more and more come out. In finally saying what she needs to say to her family, Maxine shows that she is no longer the silent girl, similar to the one from her school. In kindergarten, Maxine does not speak to anyone and does not feel the need to. However, as Maxine grows older she shows that she now feels as though she cannot wait another moment silently because she has so much to say. Maxine becomes outspoken and loud, instead of silent and submissive, something that angers her mother, yet relieves Maxine. Maxine's outburst in which her "throat [bursts] open" shows that as Maxine grows up and becomes her own person, she makes a shift from the old customs of her Chinese family to the customs of the new world of America, which isolates herself from her parents and their adherence to