ArticlesGenderLinda Hunt article impossible to speak of womans culture without understanding its variation by class and ethnic group womens world vary depending on ethnic background and social class male dominance is a common denominatoraunt my forerunner portrayed as both an enemy and as someone who is acknowledged authors shifting narration represents her own marginality going from 3rd person narration (both outsiders) going to 1st person narration (villagers us ) conflict about where own loyalty lies conveys own agonized indecision about what stance to take towards her own Chinese American upbringing if she identifies with community, she must accept and endorse own humiliation if she allows herself to fully experience the depths of her alienation, she is in danger of being cut off from her cultural roots story juxtaposed with legend of Fa Mu Lan purpose is to test whether her cultures myth about a heroic woman who defends her village will provide a way to Kingston to transcend the degrading female social role, yet to be loyal to the community

Chinese culture: patriarchal biases enemy: tries alliance on common ground of misoginy

mother: woman warrior model rigorous self discipline like swordswoman returns from public life to do farm/house work and produce sons accepts mundane life without complaint story shows that the warrior woman model could workr for some women achievements turned into materials to draw on when she talk stories

Ethnicity/ Identity Linda Hunt articleKinstons purpose is that we pay attention to the contradictions male dominance creates women are painfully at odds with themselves author is doubly marginal insider (identifies strongly with own group) outsider (deviant/rebels against tradition, questions it) personal struggle fought on the battlefield of language words used against her sting unable to find the right words/right voice to express her own P.O.V. rendered nearly voiceless for much of her youth finds authentic language with creating autobiography from family stories chinese myths own memories

final chapter articulates most explicitly her fury at her heritage and the strategies she has found for making peace with that heritage and salvaging from it what she can the talk felt something tearing at her throat night, dinner, throat burst open outburst important breakthrough in that she needs to make a choice choosing to identify with injured outsiders frees her to speak needs to get away from the Chinese-American community

Shirley K. Rose article chapters arranged in blocks against opposing chapters, some gaps brirged with cries of self doubt or victory, others left for interpretation

breaks up time as she breaks up the usual distinctions between fact and fantasy in doing so she separates her book from more traditional, chronological autobiographies

the introductory two chapters juxtapose a woman who, as an outlaw became a victim against a second woman, dutiful and heroic

Literacy as Bridge Building book is a progression of highly dramatized narratives building on each other, as they depict a mounting conflict between cultures and an ultimate resolution of that conflict in her life

she uses her autobiography as a way to imaginatively bridge two cultures and their separate versions of reality these metaphors illustrate the difference in the authors notions of what it is to have an inter-ethnic identity

she does not seek to make the Chinese culture more American, nor the American culture more Chinese she attempts, not to reconcile/subordinate one to another but to give equal validity to both through articulation

her experiences at school having to read and write highlight this difference of cultures ideographic description of words I and here

the particulars of her story are less interesting than her telling of that story her narration brings together reality and myth from the perspective of both cultures readers begin to see that reality is mythically constructed readers encourages to question their knowledge of facts and to substitute belief for knowledge

she is a multi-cultural writer work allows for reaers from a range of cultures the meaningfulness of the book is attributed to the readers efforts to understand (Reed) defamiliarization makes readers aware of their failure to understand a particular cultural context while many readers realize they do not have understanding of each culture, they do not understand the importance of the act of writing to the creation of identity

for author , writing the autobiography or talking story is a way to create her own unique cross-cultural Chinese-American reality/myth

she is willing to break traditions and taboos of either culture to do this No name woman (breaks taboo of speaking about the dead and also breaks Western taboo against failing to distinguish fiction from fact or imagined events from historical events)

builds a bridge between autobiography and fiction readers, either Chinese or American, can use to cross over to view, momentarily at least, their own cultures from the perspective of another by reading the book, we better understand the Chinese or American version of reality and myth (dual representation) i.e. having to visit neighborhood druggistfrom a Western point of view, she knows the druggist will not understandfrom a Chinese point of view, she knows her mother will never understand

offers a model of a cross-cultural identity by offering a model for creating a cross cultural identity the writing and reading of the work is a self-reflexive act in constructing the account of particular ways, writer and reader re-enact the spanning she is the interpreter and guide for the cross-cultural experience of reading her autobiography the story of poetess Tsai Yen, suggests this role in which author casts herself like her as well as her own mother, she has been taken to live among barbarians who do not understand her like the poetess, she has found a way to put her own words to the barbarian music her words seemed to be Chinese, but the barbarians understood their sadness and anger she represents herself achieving understanding and control over her life through writing about it she has adapted her mothers way of talking-story to arrive at meaning

M.H.K. article narrator is the expected subject of the autobiography labors at her narration her aunt was raped or no, she was in love, a flirt but none of these details can be found in the scare story told by Brave Orchid her expansion of that story comes very close to the work of fiction, but it is always done as part of the effort to make her own past and her kinfolk real the act of speech is real it sometimes burned her throat, to speak aloud they are taught to keep misfit emotions silent, but words suppressed gain heat; the release of unspeakables becomes an act of aggression against the community her first action in the book is a defiant telling of what her mother asked her not to do she breaks the silence which was a deliberate act of punishment against an offender with whom the narrator feels a frightening kinship words are vehicles of memory, respect and finally creation in words, Kingston has reclaimed her words shared words have also comforted the author a chant of ones descent line can call the wandering spirit home mother and daughter sang the chant of the Woman Warrior as they worked bonding experience; act of fellowship concrete details embedded in tales of faraway places since her own mother, the shaman, uses this technique in order to build China in California to prevent her daughter from becoming a foreign ghost, a non human thingshe has to raise a China up verbally this world has to be enough like the real place so that the child could return smoothly to her homeland every Chinese child raised in America tends to become part ghost in the eyes of its immigrant parents: unfamiliar, untraditional there is no linguistic distinction made between ghosts who appear as smokey columns and the flesh and blood American ghosts around question of reality plagues the writer acknowledges the violent villagers decision to maintain the real that her mothers myths tested their strength to establish realities reality is constructed by people acting and speaking still tries to sort out everything: childhood, movies, imagination etc.

as a foreigner there are gaps for her when she explores the larger world the separations that accompany adolescent rebelion and secretswhich are gaps in speech, all frighten and challenge Kingston

the beginning and ending of the book deal with separations no name woman: cast out tortures silent girl: partial image of herself wants to separate from and punish herself attempts to bridge a division by telling her mother her secrets a person must talk out loud to join the community but somehow the thoughts this girl has alienates her nearly as often as they tie her she cannot digest the whole of the Chinese system as her mother did most important is her method for making people real by juxtaposing contradictory personality traits: Brave Orchid tells ugly stories yet also loves her daughter once defended a weak madwoman, yet bought a girl slave she is an artist, creator, woman capable of standing as a substantial individual while at the same time fitting in with a culture that calls girls maggots unable to imitate her perfectly, author imitates her techniques

according to Pascal and Holland, readers do not tend to unite with autobiographical heroes and they do with fictional heroes a fiction writers invisibility and distance from the work allows it to stand on its own thus seems more intimately adaptable to the involvement of readers the author constructs a partly fictional world in order to be able to reenter it imaginatively as a reader, someone who is distant enough to see clearly but is also emotionally involved in the story this move is similar to the adaptation of focus any adult must make when looking at someone who was once completely a mother but who is now a person with complexities

according to Kenneth Burke the more a work depends on psychology of form rather than information, the more it bears repeating: thus music keeps fresh after many repetitions Kingston is more artist than most preoccupations with forms and living symbols can be discovered by a simple comparison of chapters (first two) offers her a new interpretation of her own writing which does not challenge the laws of the community in this case, but acts with them like the Warrior Woman, she carries words carved into the skin of her back and will now tell vengeance for her family both tales were told by the mother how does one explain the inconsisntencies by occasionaly taking viewpoint of aunt, she gains vision of someone who has stepped fresh off the plane her analysis of the difficulties of survival in the U.S. has helped her move towards sympathy after being asked to stay quiet instead of telling her secrets, she theorizes that this was probably her mothers own quiet time, the one cool space available in the schedule of a hot day book ends with captured singer Tsai Yen who sand love of her lost country offers narrator an alternative to the Woman Warrior who partly failed her as a child the poet is also a warrior, so the two mythic forerunners blend author constructs her memory into patterns that will educate her to go on relies on artfulness and felt comparisons partly because she had been required to build a world from contradictory pieces also because understanding how the Chinese world fits together means understanding her mother, the magician who raised the fence around her autobiography embodies the labor of a young woman to develop a large sympathy for her mother once she can see her mother, she can turn and see herself as an entire and complex adult, rather than as a crazy mozaic of mutually exclusive pieces.

Space M.H.K. articleLocality never set foot in China, nor was she present in L.A. this distance of the narrator (self-effacing quality) contrasts with the intimacy one can sense in reading the book links inherited stories with explications and memories of her own also works to see these people clearlu, trying to construct a picture of her family from fragments and to enter their world in much the same way that a sympathetic reader would; she is as involved in this process of learning as we areDistance (physical and internal)

problems of distance expand beyond topic to influence form her use of inherited storires to begin or center most of her chapters creates ambiguity between the close personal and the distant impersonal passed on, the Mu Lan chant is impersonal or suprapersonal it has gained an existence and form of its own speaking brings it to life the warriors story is simultaneously hers and not hers, and influence but also a dissapointment writing can be a sneaky form of suppressed speech she writes forbidden secrets as she works with these stories, she dramatizes the sense of distance and silence which frequently oppresses her even as an adult the author has subtitled her book Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts the authors style recalls the situation of a fiction writer, who also stands apart from the story by using a narrator to speak and judge the form of the book is dramatic she enacts the central problem of her life, that she is not completely Chinese, she is part hovering ghost this is a laboring book that depends on the act of writing, the juxtaposition of words and tales, to crystallize meanings she gathers concrete objects she also removes herself a little in order to give the stories a kind of objectivity which she knows to be part illusion

Agency Linda Hunt articlelanguage a good part of Fa Mu Lans training involves exercises which teach her how to wake with her body the ideographs for certain words in Ks worls is through mastery of language that a warrior is created

in crying out to the world about her cultures mistreatment of women, she has in a sense taken on the warrior role her culture recommended to those of its women most capable of heroism literary form techniques allow her to give voice to the conflicts and contradictions which almost silenced her paying tribute to the importance of her family and culture have always placed on the verbal imagination reminds us to be careful about embracing a universal notion about what it means to be a woman important link for many women is the dysfunction between female identity and other aspects of cultural heritage contradictions between allegiance to gender and fidelity to some other dimension of ones cultural background (race, class; ethnicity)