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“Great Warrior: Kingston”
In my case, the section of “White Tigers” was the most interesting part in “Woman Warrior.” It’s composed of Kingston’s childhood fantasy of ‘Fa Mu Lan’ who is the woman warrior as the title of the book reveals. Kingston followed a bird to the mountains in the world of fantasy. She arrived at the hut and met the people who wanted to train her to make a good warrior. For this reason, she started training which involved spending several years alone on the mountain with limited eating or drinking. After completing the trainings, she returned from the mountain. At home, she watched some images of her parents, husband, and brother, an aspect which she acquired from her mentor who taught her the fights. She wanted to save them but had to wait because she was not prepared for it. Finally, she learned the way of using the magical power then went to meet the baron’s army to save her parents. In the process of preparation, a ‘white horse’ appeared to carry Kingston, and she got ready to lead. Then she confronted the baron for stealing the village.
From this story, Kingston displayed how Chinese Americans have been treating women in the American society. As a woman, even though she may have been good at something, she got no prize but bad treatment. Likewise, she could not do anything in the presence of racist men and as a result people died at the mercy of communists. In conclusion, Kingston realized that the words or sayings would be the only way to gather and reunite Chinese-Americans.
From my perspective, Kingston is a person hard to define with one word. That is because she is the character who portrays a variety of appearances and plays multi-roles in “Woman Warrior.” Sometimes Kingston disappeared in the middle of the story, “White Tigers”. As I read the “Woman Warrior”, I thought that differences existed among the items disclosed in the story and biography. The episodes were quite confusing. Despite causing such a problem to the readers, Kingston overlooks it.
The most significant matter, regardless of the confusion, lies in her memories. She is depicted as an elusive character, unique to her audience. Besides, her character can be visibly recognized as changing in each of the different parts discussed, from “No name woman” to “White tigers” and so on. As we know, she grew from a girl who could not speak well to a woman who found an outlet for her words and sayings. According to her autobiography, she grew up from a frustrated girl to a magnificent adult, unbelievably writing her own memoirs. In addition, her special characteristic was an innovative method of attracting readers into this book.
The most important thing is that she conclusively delivered her main idea about the difficulties of reconciliation and assimilations in American cultures as one of Chinese-Americans main challenges. “My American life has been such a disappointment.”(45) This sentence directly supports her opinion with no doubt. “I live now where there are Chinese and Japanese, but emigrants from my own village look at me as if I had failed them. Living among one’s own emigrant villagers can give a good Chinese far from China glory and a place.”(52) These sentences also point out her mind suffering and desires to the society at the same time. Of course, she showed how much it is difficult to live well in a different world as a different person altogether. However, she also indicated the possibility of recovery through her life. In particular, she felt the difference from her friend who is American in her class. In other words, they were fundamentally different from childhood so she could not help but undergo the hard experience unintentionally. On a brighter note, we apparently see how she overcame all these challenges since growing up as Chinese-Americans would be hard for anyone.
In addition, there is an exciting fact in the “Woman warrior”. I could not find men characters in its entirety. I am not exactly sure whether or not it was the author’s intentions to emphasize on the women’s worth by completely overlooking men. Most of the stories relating to Kingston tend to uphold women characters. The author attempted to show the women’s roles in Chinese society while at the same time getting rid of the biases surrounding them as illustrated in Kingston’s life. Since she played the role of mother, wife, and daughter in the battle as a woman warrior, it was easy to convey her message of this theme. “Each racial stereotype comes in two models, the acceptable model and the unacceptable model… Chin and Chan believe that while the “masculine” stereotypes of blacks, Indians, and Mexicans are generated by “racist hate,” “racist- love” has been lavished on Chinese Americans detailed as targets of “effeminate stereotypes” (309). As the article revealed, the stereotypes of specified people or groups have been in existence.
In particular, the ‘Woman Warrior’ by Kingston succeeded in showing the importance of women and their roles no matter where they lived or came from. “Given these divergent views, the stage is set for a confrontation between “heroism” and “feminism” in Chinese American letters” (311). This implies that both concepts can not be separated from each other in matters regarding Chinese-American cultures. At a glance, these concepts cannot be attached to Kingston’s discussions, however, relations are evidently existent since Kingston displayed these problems simultaneously through the events that take place in her life. To begin with, she suffered from feminism and racism in “White tigers” then became a hero reflecting “heroism” at the end of her story. Therefore, it’s apparent that she is the proper protagonist as a representative of the Chinese-American woman.
In conclusion, her fantasy was not a fantasy but a reality which came true obviously. She gave many people dreams, hopes and opened infinitive possibilities of assimilation and adaptation in the mainstream of other cultures.
Works Cited
Cheung, King-Kok. “The Woman Warrior versus The Chinaman Pacific: must a Chinese American choose between feminism and heroism?” Gender.Ed. Wu and Song.
