Maxine Hong Kingston
The Woman Warrior:
Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
(New York: Knopf, 1976)
Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese-American woman born in 1940 in California. One of six children, she attended both Chinese and American school while growing up. Her family owned a laundry where she spent many hours working and listening to her mother "talk-story." Although the author was born in the United States she has been strongly influenced by the culture and ethnicity of her Chinese born parents. Her mother's "talk story" was particularly enlightening and made a lifetime impact on a child who would grow up to use these tales in her writings.
Two of the most significant roles which stand out in her book The Woman Warrior are those of "ghosts" and Fa Mu Lan the ancient Chinese woman warrior. Ghosts are spoken of throughout the book and according to Maxine's mother they are both good and bad, dead and alive. In the chapter, "No Name Woman" Maxine retells a story originally told to her by her mother. Her father's sister had a baby by a man who was not her husband and was a disgrace to the family and the entire village. She committed suicide with her baby by drowning in the family well. As Maxine writes "the real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family's deliberating forgetting her…Always hungry, always needing, she would have to beg food from other ghosts, snatch and steal it from those whose living descendants give them gifts." Then she ends the chapter with "The Chinese are always very frightened of the drowned ones, whose weeping ghost, wet hair hanging and skin bloated, waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute." Superstitions are extremely prevalent in the Chinese culture and stories are passed down through generations.
In the chapter "Shaman" Maxine describes ghosts of all genre. The Mail Ghost, The Milk Ghost, The Garbage Ghost. I think these were all the white people who the family interacted with but felt weren't real in their world. One excerpt which was cute was: "Mother, Mother! It's happening again. I taste something in my mouth, but I'm not eating anything." Me, too, Mother, Me too. There's nothing there. Just my spit. My spit tastes like sugar. Your grandmother in China is sending you candy again, said my mother. Human beings do not need Mail Ghosts to send messages." And so the influence of ghosts in her life were very real and very significant.
The other major role which influened Maxine was that of Fa Mu Lan, the woman warrior. According to the book, Legend of Mu Lan: A Heroine of Ancient China, this is a bilingual folktale, based on a poem from the Song Dynasty, in which a young girl disguises herself as a man and lead the army of China to victory against the enemy." Maxine recalls her Mother and herself singing a song about Mu Lan very frequently during her childhood. She also dreams the tale of Mu Lan and puts herself in her place. In Chinese culture a girl is not as worthy as a boy so the legend of Mu Lan is extremely important and significant to girls. Feminists might retaliate that although Mu Lan had the skills of a warrior she had to disguise herself as a man in order to fight. A girl needed to aspire to be a swordswoman. Maxine says "I went away to college – Berkeley in the sixties – and I studied, and I marched to change the world, but I did not turn into a boy. I would have liked to bring myself back as a boy for my parents to welcome with chickens and pigs." Fortunately, Maxine fought this bizarre reasoning which she was brought up on and rebelled. This is what has given her the fight she has inside her to not be stereotyped" as a passive woman. She will give birth in the field and get up and work, she won't cook and be a "slave."
Maxine Hong Kingston is a successful author and teacher. She is my contemporary and has opened my eyes into how influential our cultural backgrounds are to our very being. She is ten years older than me but because of the dynamics of her culture has stories and events ingrained in her being that makes her seem like she could have been born on another planet. I applaud her and am mystified by her story. I am also intrigued by the stories of her Mother and the astounding history behind them. Her Mother trained as a doctor/midwife at a later age than most woman in China and then came to this country and worked in a laundry. She gave birth to the first of six children at the age of 45. Talk about a renaissance woman. Her mother was really very progressive for her time but clung to a lot of the old tales and fallacies which are Chinese tradition.
This story The Woman Warrior has inspired me to delve more into Chinese culture especially concerning women.
Maxine Hong Kingston has done an extraordinary job of combining the old with the new. She tells a tale which is difficult to put down and makes the reader examine how much culture influences who we are and what we become. In my view Maxine Hong Kingston is a swordwoman and her sword is her pen.
|