Oppression of Women in Book "Woman Warrior"

The difficulty for her was that her heritage consisted of the tralatitious Chinese view of the inferiority of women. "Women in the old mainland China did non choose" (capital of Jamaica 6).

Kingston's take hold is a "partly fictitious hightail it ab bug out her girlhood as it was affected by the beliefs of her Chinese family," a blending of family hi business relationship with Kingston's personal experiences and ideas (Bowden 223).

The book is divided into five chapters depicting three adult males in conflict. The archetypal is the traditional Chinese experience communicated to Kingston by her yield. "Whenever she had to reprimand us about life, my pay rearwards told . . . a story to win up on" (Kingston 5). The second is the experience of her ancestors in the joined States, trying to make their way as immigrants while holding on to their Chinese cultural values, and passing their values on to Kingston. The third is Kingston's experiences trying to fit into 20th Century American culture as a Chinese-American. "Those of us in the low gear American generations score had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America" (7).

Kingston's come Brave Orchid is a major factor in the difficulties faced by Kingston. Her mother's "talk-stories" and antipathy to assimilation in American culture causes Kingston a great deal of disquiet and confusion. Brave Orchid's beliefs that Americans are not to be trusted, and that women should be silent, presented obstacl

es to Kingston's search for her own remarkable voice. By the novel's end, she finds the voice she reads to use language for self-expression, and have a successful career as an author.

When she was very young, Kingston's mother cut her daughter's tongue (as had been done to her), to keep her from becoming tongue-tied, entirely the secondary girl was so shy and timid, and so impatient of fitting into American culture that she spoke very little in school, if at all. She felt this would make her seem "American-feminine." When she finds out about the tongue cutting, she challenges her mother, "Why didn't you cut my brothers' and sister' tongues?" to which her mother replies, "They didn't need it.

" When Kingston protest, her mother says, "Why don't you quit blabbering and get to work" (164). Although this scene takes place in the rebellious 1960s, it still was not a woman's place to question ritual.

The opening words of the foremost chapter, "No Name Woman," set the tone and theme of the book. Kingston's mother is about to tell her a talk-story about her dead Chinese aunt who is the No Name Woman of the tale, but startle she tells her daughter, "You must not tell anyone" (3), thus attempting to restrict her daughter's voice. The story of the aunt who killed both her newborn baby, born out of wedlock, and herself because she brought rape to her family and village is told to Kingston by Brave Orchid as a cautionary tale. As Kingston enters puberty, her mother wants to deter her against sex. "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?" (5). Her mother is warning her not to go against cultural mores. But the cultural mores Kingston faces in atomic number 20 are different from China, and the young girl is not all frightened by the story, but also confused.

To close her story, Kingston writes of Is'Ai Yen, a poetess who was held captive by the barbarians for 12 years, after which she brought back to her
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