The Woman Warrior

Maxine Kingston reveals her struggle with being a first generation, multi-cultural, immigrant in "The Woman Warrior". She uses the story her mother told her, of her aunt who committed suicide, to work through and tell her own journey of self-identification. As the daughter of immigrants, it was difficult to decipher which part of her was Chinese and which part was American. I am sure there are many of immigrants that endured this type of dilemma, but for Kingston it was compounded by the secrecy within the Chinese heritage of her family. "You must not tell anyone what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born. That is an incredibly distressing thing for a child to hear, even from your own mother.

However, living in America gave Kingston a different vantage point; she experienced a far more relaxed, open and liberal type of childhood than she would have in China. And I imagine this was really perplexing for her. How do you comprehend the traditions and rituals of another culture, even if you are a descendent of such, when you are being raised in a completely alternative one? This is evident in the following quote:

"Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?" (Kingston)

 

 

Kingston realized that she could at least try to break away from the disturbing and dysfunctional influence of her parents, and she did this by telling her aunt's story. I think she understood the level of dysfunction and negativity that plagued her family's heritage and made a decision to embrace it, expose it and rise above it. This gave her power, the power to find herself, separate from her family history, but belonging to it at the very same time.