Woman Warrior Stereotypes

In The Woman Warrior, Kingston provides a detailed description of a talk-story, told to her by her mother, about a woman warrior in order to illustrate that ideas transform behavior, and ideas provide humans with the ability to defy stereotypes and self-actualize. Kingston recalls the talk-stories her mother told her as a young child. Kingston’s adult mind fathoms the great power which her mother held with these stories. Specifically, Kingston recalls the story of Fa Mu Lan, a woman warrior who trained for over seven years so that she could fight in place of her father and lead an army to victory. Kingston remembers inspirational ideas such as this one which her mother, Brave Orchid, placed into her mind at an early age. Kingston discusses …show more content…
Since Kingston is not free to embrace her success, she successfully defied the stereotype that Chinese women can not work hard and succeed. Ideas can and will manifest themselves into reality. Kingston was introduced to many women who succeeded even though society told them they would never succeed, and Kingston became similar to these women in the ideas. Through these ideas, Kingston was able to break free from the bounds placed upon her by societal norms and indulge into a world full of opportunity and promise. Kingston’s mother deserves a profound amount of praise for introducing these ideas to her daughter, which directly contradict the Chinese’ traditional views on the gender-roles of women. These ideas led to inspiration and ultimately manifested themselves in Kingston’s life. By becoming the woman warrior, Kingston demonstrates how ideas become behaviors. Ideas allow people to escape cultural obstacles and self-actualize. For this very reason, dictators as well as those wanting to seize power want to regulate and restrict ideas. The most powerful solution to the oppression of any group is ideas, because ideas tend to manifest themselves into