The Woman Warrior: A Literary Analysis

When reading fiction, a person goes into the endeavor with is called a “suspension of disbelief” meaning that they accept anything could happen within the pages of the novel, correct? Well when reading an autobiography or, if you would prefer a broader term, life writing, they go in with exactly the opposite. You will probably expect to read something that is within the realm of reality, and, if it is appropriate to the genre, completely truthful. Since I, due to my English major that I never seem to shut up about, have read a rather substantial amount of autobiographies and memoirs, I can tell you a little bit about what to expect. As far as structure, it probably isn’t going to be like a text. On the contrary, it can be like a novel where each chapter can tell its own story, such as the variation of tales told by Maxine Hong Kingston in her book The Woman Warrior; however, you could also have a book completely with character development and chapters that culminate to an overall story, such as in The Autobiography of Malcolm X which starts at the very beginning with “When my mother was pregnant with me,” and it end which Malcolm X addressing the likelihood of his own death and ending with the closure of, “all of the credit …show more content…
While some pieces do contain cold, hard facts, such as Blunt who tells the reader, “Our town was Malta, population 2,500, county seat of Phillips County, Montana.” (3), most of the pieces work from memory, which is far more fallible. Also, some authors write from a cultural perspective that may seem fictitious, such as Kingston who, in the chapter “Shaman” of The Woman Warrior, talks about the battler her mother had with a “Sitting Ghost” that she challenged one night (69). All of these life writings are different, and there is probably something out there for whatever you are in the mood