Maxine Hong Kingston

In the memoir The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston writes about her experiences as a Chinese American growing up in the United States. Although the value of women differ in China and America, they are still seen as inferior in both counties. Kingston shows her enmity toward the way females are viewed in Chinese culture through the use of talk stories, comparison, and personal experiences. Kingston incorporates the use of talk-stories into her writing as a technique to show how society views females as worthless. In one of her talk stories, a young daughter named Fa Mu Lan joins the army in the place of her father due to his old age. However, only men were allowed a place in the army because women were seen as incapable and weak. As a result, she dresses up as a man by putting “on [her] men’s clothes and armor and tied [her] hair in a man’s fashion” (36). Kingston realizes that women are perceived as less than men, and places the talk-story of Fa Mu Lan into her memoir to show that females are just as capable as males.…

Maxine Hong Kingston finds it hard to live in America as the daughter of Chinese emigrants because there are two different expectations of her. She criticizes the patriarchal society of both the United States and China that she is caught between: Once I get outside the house, what bird might call me; on what horse could I ride away? Marriage and childbirth strengthen the swordswoman, who is not a maid like Joan of Arc. Do the women’s work; then do more work, which will become ours too. [...]…

I was a bit drawn back that the author, Maxine Hong Kingston, chose to reveal such private details about her family in the first couple of lines. After reading the first paragraph, I was okay. Still, it did not take away from the suspense of the memoir or reading. I did not mind knowing the basis of the story in the beginning. In fact, it made me find the book more interesting. Other may disagree, but I feel like Kingston’s methodology behind this was brilliant.It was as if a load had been…

Maxine Hong Kingston, born in 1940 on October 27 in Stockton, California, is a first generation Chinese-American child along with her six younger siblings. Kingston would have two older siblings in addition to the six, but they died in China before her parents immigrated to the U.S. Kingston’s parents, Tom and Ying Lan Hong, both immigrated to America, but they arrived at different times. Tom, who came to the United States in 1924, was a poet and also a scholar but could not find work that fit…

Maxine Hong Kingston is one of the first-generation Chinese-American citizens because she was born in California at October 27, 1940 as the eldest child to a poor Chinese family who were wishing for better life, so they decides to immigrate and reside in the United States because of starvation in China, in 1924. Kingston father works as a teacher in China, while her mother works as a midwife there. Chen Lok Chua
 records that the first generation of Chinese immigrants have the same version of…

No Name Women, an essay written by Maxine Hong Kingston talks about Kingston's family background, more specifically her aunt. In the beginning of the essay, Kingston recalls her mother telling her that she had an aunt she didn't know about. This aunt was considered a traitor to their family because she wasn’t faithful to her husband. Her love affair ended with her becoming pregnant, this caused the villagers to storm the families home. The aunt made it out of the house and to a pigsty where she…

Conflicts In The Work Of Maxine Hong Kingston And Alice Walker Recently I came across two readings that were strong-minded on conflicts that heavily affected the main characters path. These two readings I came across were " No Name Woman" By Maxine Hong Kingston and " Beauty: When The Other Dancer Is The Self" By Alice Walker. In " No Name Woman" By Maxine Hong Kingston the conflicts the main character faces is that when the Aunt of the writer broke a number of taboos in her…

analyze the essay ‘No Name Woman’ written by Maxine Hong Kingston. This was a roller-coaster of a story with high emotions and dark secrets reveled throughout the essay. Kingston’s culture is known as family oriented and strict, through her essay she shares her family story and how this culture affected her family personally. Being Chinese decent, she was raised in a very strict, superstitious, tradition holding household. She goes on to explain to us, how her mother forced her sisters and her…

decades.” (AAIJ). This law would not be repealed until 1943, before the husband of Brave Orchid’s sister, Moon Orchid would travel to America with the hopes of becoming a surgeon. Moon Orchid, unable to immigrate is left in Hong Kong for over thirty years where she grows old raising…

Woman”, we can see how Kingston lived in a continual conflict between messages, sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, of two cultures. How could a bridge be built on this terrible emptiness with socialization within a framework of expectations on the one hand and acculturation on the other? The lack of public voice, the silence, the secret kept, formed the loose threads of the story of the aunt who committed suicide and whose name was erased from the collective memory. “You must not tell anyone,…