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The Road To Self Discovery
Essential to Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior is the theme of finding one's own personal voice and identity. Interspersed throughout the memoir's five parts are numerous references to the emotional and physical struggle that Kingston endures on her path to finding her own identity. For the many women who are voiceless throughout the novel, Kingston supplies the language these silent women need and in effect, give them their own, individualized identities. There is a movement throughout the entire memoir from silence to language. The memoir opens with the words "You must not tell anyone…" (1) and closes with, "It translated well," (0) marking the journey from voicelessness and silence to strength and an identity. Through the telling of these voiceless women's' stories, Kingston is able to find her own voice, her own identity, a process that, though always morphing and changing, eventually leads Kingston to a strong sense of self.
Kingston struggles with her identity which in turn reflects her gender ideas. She wants to show her readers that she is a woman warrior, she wants to be the woman warrior and the writing of her memoir guides her through that process. She shows this in many ways by telling stories which reflect her personality or, in her mind, her gender. Leslie W. Rabine makes reference to this idea in her writing No Lost Paradise Social Gender and Symbolic Gender in the Writings Of Maxine Hong Kingston. She explains how "Kingston does away with the illusion of a universal feminine, placing among her confusing and painful childhood experiences the attempts to be "American Feminine'" (Casebook 88). An integral part of Kingston's road to self discovery lies in finding her place both as a female and as a Chinese-American living in an American society.
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"No Name Woman," the first part of the novel details Kingston's childhood and starts off the memoir by breaking the family-imposed silence that surrounds the secret of an aunt, whom she refers to as No Name Woman, who became pregnant through adultery while her husband was away. Because Kingston is so concerned with exploring how her Chinese cultural history can be reconciled with her emerging sense of self as an American, she explores this Chinese history and tries to connect it to her present life. She explains how, when questioned, No Name Woman refuses to name the father of her unborn child, a protection for him but a simultaneous victimization for her, as a nameless woman suggests someone with neither a story nor a voice. The intensity and intricate detailing of the story allows the readers a glimpse of what it was like to be a woman in a Chinese society. Brave Orchid tells Kingston this story because she wants her daughter to be the perfect female for their family. "Dont let your father know I told you. He denies her. Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Dont humiliate us. You wouldnt like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful" (5). Kingston realizes here that her mother is concerned about the possibility of Kingston having premarital sex, as she clearly states that as her reason for telling No Name Woman's story, but she fails to realize at this point that, in telling this story, Brave Orchid also hopes to strengthen her daughter both emotionally and psychologically by providing for her some sense of self.
In order to fill in some of the gaps in the story, Kingston hypothesizes the many different ways in which her aunt became pregnant and, by the very act of writing down her aunt's story, Kingston in effect gives this silent woman a voice. For Kingston, "the [aunt's] real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family's deliberately forgetting her…My aunt haunts me � her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her" (16). Although Kingston never learns what her aunt's real name was, the symbolic act of naming the woman No Name Woman honors this forgotten ancestor's memory.
Kingston is extremely interested in bridging the gap between her past and her present, as she states, "Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhood fits into solid America" (5). By rewriting her mother's talk-story and giving No Name Woman a new voice, Kingston is taking one of the first steps in reconciling her Chinese past and her American present. Throughout the course of the memoir she learns the act of talk-story telling from her mother, marking a certain continuity between her, representing the first-generation Chinese-American, and her mother, representing the cultural Chinese. Though she does yet not realize it, Kingston will eventually come to see the strong connection between her and her mother and how this has helped her form her own identity.
Because of the essentially silent role that women play in Chinese culture, then the talk-stories and legends that mothers tell their daughters can also be seen as unspoken guides for the children. One such talk-story, the legend of the Chinese woman warrior Fa Mu Lan, is a constant reminder to young Kingston that women can rise above socially imposed barriers. "White Tigers" is, in part, the story of Kingston's childhood fantasy of transcending a life of insignificance. As a child, Kingston imagines herself to be like Fa Mu Lan, who saves both her family and community. Brave Orchid's tale of this woman warrior exemplifies how talk-stories and legends create alternative voices for women who otherwise would remain silent their entire lives, always dominated by the men.
Kingston's young adult life, however, remains a voiceless one. Juxtaposed with her fantasies of warrior greatness in "White Tigers" are memories of times when her voice was of no help in protecting herself and others. She recalls her whispered protests at one of her employer's racist attitudes, which she challenges using a "small-person's voice that makes no impact" (48). Refusing to type invitations for a different employer who chooses to hold a banquet at a restaurant being picketed by the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality, Kingston is immediately fired. But again, her protest is whispered, her "voice unreliable" (4).
Kingston's empowering women by creating individualized voices for them also works in relation to her mother. Because Brave Orchid, despite her many years in America, does not speak English, she is effectively voiceless in her new world. Through Kingston, however, Brave Orchid's achievements are vocalized and recorded, just like all the other women's lives in The Woman Warrior. Kingston's memoir reveals Brave Orchid's sacrifices and lifts her out of the nameless Chinese crowd living in America. Ironically though, this process of voicing women's experience threatens Kingston's own self-esteem and ability to find her own voice and identity. Kingston also details another example of Brave Orchid's independence and strength by explaining her mother's decision to keep her own name, rather than take her husband's at their marriage. Here the power of to name oneself and to have a strong, self-created identity is especially poignant. It is strengthened even more when Brave Orchid "kept Brave Orchid, adding no American name nor holding one in reserve for American emergencies" (77). Kingston is seeing more and more how important it is to have a name, and that the people who control the power of language can survive any ordeal because they will not lose their personal identities.
At the end of the third part, titled "Shaman," Kingston and her mother have a talk about the differences between some of the Chinese and American cultures, like the way time works, and how a sense of belonging changes a person's perspective. By the end of their talk, both have gained a better understanding of the other and they even refer to one another by their old endearing names, "Little Dog" and "Mama." Kingston is finally able to acknowledge the succession of generations and the fact that her mother has contributed to her identity and she can finally proudly recognize their similarities, "I am really a Dragon, as she is a Dragon, both of us born in dragon years. I am practically a first daughter of a first daughter" (10).
When an incident occurs with the delivery of pharmaceutical drugs to the family laundry business instead of their usual order and Brave Orchid forces Kingston to demand reparations from the druggist, Kingston is embarrassed, and thus comes to a new crossroads in her search for a voice and her own identity "You can't entrust your voice to the Chinese either...they want to capture your voice for their own use" (16). She is really starting to grasp and work through the paradoxes and seeming dead-ends that she is encountering when trying to reconcile the two different cultures.
Kingston sees all too clearly that the cost of remaining silent is great, as proved by Kingston's tale of her aunt, Mood Orchid. The tragic story, told in "At the Western Place," depicts a woman, deserted by her husband, who has so completely internalized the patriarchical view that women should always remain silent and never question male authority that she literally is silenced to death. But Kingston, by writing down her aunt's story, puts the voice back into Moon Orchid's life while simultaneously adding another step to her own path of self discovery. By actually putting into words the story of Mood Orchid, Kingston is able to see what paths not to follow and learns an important lesson.
In the memoir's last chapter, "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe," Kingston searches to locate a middle ground in which she can live within each of these two cultures, and essentially, ends up fusing the two to create her own identity with both of them. While she finds that traditional Chinese society silences women, she also discovers that well-behaved females in American society are just as quickly expected to be quiet. In order to feel even partially accepted in American culture, young Kingston feels she must retreat behind an emotional wall and lose her voice "We American-Chinese girls had to whisper to make ourselves American-feminine. Apparently we whispered even more softly than the Americans" (167). Despite this whispering however, Kingston, even as a child, knows the consequences of being voiceless. In one poignant and painful episode, she describes the hatred she felt for another Chinese girl who refused to speak, and the physical brutality Kingston resorted to in order to try and get this silent girl to talk, "I pulled at the hair at her temples, pulled the tears out of her eyes. "Say, "Ow,'" I said…You're disgusting…I grabbed her by the shoulders…" (178-17). In truth though, her hatred for this girl is all the more vivid because this silent girl is so much like her, physically, emotionally and socially. Kingston fears becoming exactly like this voiceless and nameless girl, who in effect, serves as Kingston's alter ego. The realization here is also that voice is not always the wonder that Kingston dreams it to be, rather it is associated with "the worst thing I had yet done to another person" (10).
Another obstacle in Kingston's search for self discovery was the veil of secrecy that was kept around the family affairs. Because Kingston's parents came to the United States at the time when Chinese immigration was illegal, the children were never allowed to speak of their cultural origins and history. But even if Kingston had wanted to talk about it, she would not have been able to, for there was so little information even volunteered to her about her background that it would have made it almost impossible to tell. This voicelessness only further hinders Kingston's self definition. For Kingston, the very act of writing The Woman Warrior is a healing and emotional experience, a form of therapy for her. Talking about her past becomes her cure for silence and her method for achieving an individual voice and a personal place in society and her world. In addition, by writing this memoir, Kingston in effect makes sure that now that she has found her identity and her voice, no one will be able to take it away from her, nor will she ever be forgotten.
At the end of the memoir, Kingston tells the talk-story of Ts'ai Yen, a poetess who was captured by barbarians and forced to live among them for many years. Though unfamiliar and uncomfortable at first, Ts'ai Yen eventually learns how to fit the barbarians into her life while still maintaining her culture and heritage. By the end of the memoir, Kingston too has found herself, her voice, and learned the need to incorporate both Brave Orchid's talk-stories and the new way of American life into her own life and make it all fit together. She has finally learned that she too can be a Woman Warrior.
Brave Orchid tells Kingston this story because she wants her daughter to be the perfect female for their family. "Dont let your father know I told you. He denies her. Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Dont humiliate us. You wouldnt like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful" (5). This is frightening for Kingston because she feels that women are being watched to make sure they are behaving the right way for society. Kingston eventually overcomes this womanly figure by turning into a warrior. Whether her stories are true or not she is telling us that she can take care of herself and portray herself in a masculine way. Through all her experiences with the old man and woman whom she refers to numerous times throughout the course of the book, she learns how to become tough and take care of herself.
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