The Woman Warrior Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts

The world, and the United States especially, is learning faster than ever how important it is not to discriminate against individuals or groups of people based on the color of their skin. However, the world is not perfect and this is an incredibly slow process. Like in Citizen, a collection of poems, images, and stories revolving around the injustices against African Americans, this research paper will highlight the problems with American society s judgments and discriminations that have become social norms. In addition, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, a memoir written around a Chinese girl and her struggles of balancing two identities, will demonstrate the pressure and bias society places on a person of color.†¦show more content†¦Even thousands of years ago humans of different complexions traded with one another and yet there were no racist feelings. Clearly, injustices have happened to specific groups of people before the eighteenth century, however humans have only came up with the formal definition for these injustices after the eighteenth century, mostly due to the systems of colonization which was continued by imperialization. These systems both, â€Å"rely on the colonization and exploitation of other peoples.† (Kaplan, 1) While colonization was a practice that had many negative effects towards people of color, imperialization was much worse. The Encyclopedia of European Social History states, â€Å"Imperialism, however, was an integrated system, a set of beliefs far more coherent and pernicious than early colonialism ever had been. European imperialism, defined as the period between 1885 and 1918, pursued aggressive world political goals and systematically annexed other nations not just for economic gain, as colonialism always had, but to increase its power base abroad, no longer just at home.† (Kaplan, 1). Most of the countries that were taken imperialized were countries that have populations of people of color. This caused the growing judgements andShow MoreRelatedThe Woman Warrior : Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts1833 Words   |  8 Pagesmale) colleagues. This gender discrimination is a powerful issue that Maxine Hong Kingston focuses on in her memoir The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. In the memoir, Kingston discusses the gender discrimination she faced while growing up in a Chinese-American family and culture. Similarly, both women in sports and Chinese-American women, specifically Maxine in The Woman Warrior, face discrimination and inequality because of their gender; however, today, women are more vocal and haveRead MoreThe Woman Warrior : Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts1580 Words   |  7 PagesThe Woman Warrior Summary and Response In the memoir The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, written by Maxine Hong Kingston, the author addresses autobiographically the difficulty of combining two cultures. Kingston opens the book with the chapter No Name Woman, a recount of a story her mother told her when she was a child about an aunt she once had who killed herself. Kingston delves into the story of her unnamed aunt explaining the events in intricate detail. Her aunt, whose husbandRead MoreThe Woman Warrior : Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts1155 Words   |  5 PagesIn Maxine Kingston’s memoir The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts--especially shown in the section â€Å"No Name Woman†, she describes the way her family has treated and expects her to treat her unknown, dead aunt and how this all correlates with herself as an individual. Kingston realizes the rift between the gender roles within the Chinese tradition and struggles to form her own opinion concerning this for gotten, dead family member and herself. Through the telling of her aunt’s complexRead MoreThe Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston1722 Words   |  7 PagesIn The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston crafts a fictitious memoir of her girlhood among ghosts. The book’s classification as a memoir incited significant debate, and the authenticity of her representation of Chinese American culture was contested by Asian American scholars and authors. The Woman Warrior is ingenuitive in its manipulation of the autobiographical genre. Kingston integrates the value of storytelling in her memoir and relates it to dominant themes about silence, cultural authenticityRead More Impact of Chinese Heritage on Maxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior2371 Words   |  10 PagesImpact of Chinese Heritage on Maxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior Haunted by the power of images? I do feel that I go into madness and chaos. Theres a journey of everything falling apart, even the meaning and the order that I can put on something by the writing. —Maxine Hong Kingston It is true that some dream in color, and some dream in black and white. Some dream in Sonic sounds, and some dream in silence. In Maxine Hong Kingstons literary works, the readers enter a soundlessRead MoreWoman Warrior Essay1345 Words   |  6 PagesWoman Warrior Essay Maxine Hong Kingstons novel, The Woman Warrior is a semi-autobiographical collection of short stories that chronicles her childhood in California. It gives the reader a feeling of how it feels like to be a Chinese American girl growing up with traditional parents in a world that is quite different from theirs. Throughout the novel, both she and her mother refer to the outside world as ghosts. The subtitle given to the book is Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. To figureRead MoreMaxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior Essay1302 Words   |  6 PagesMaxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingstons novel, The Woman Warrior is a semi-autobiographical collection of short stories that chronicles her childhood in California. It gives the reader a feeling of how it feels like to be a Chinese American girl growing up with traditional parents in a world that is quite different fromRead MoreThe Woman Warrior: A Tale of Identity1972 Words   |  8 PagesThe Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston is a collection of memoirs, a blend of Kingston’s autobiography with Chinese folklore. The book is divided into five interconnected chapters: No Name Woman, White Tigers, Shaman, At the Western Palace, and A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe. In No Name Woman, three characters are present: Kingston, Kingston’s mother, and Kingston’s aunt. This section starts off with Kingston’s mother retelling the story of her aunt and herRead MoreMaxine Hong Kingston s No Name Woman1271 Words   |  6 PagesCalifornia, her fa mily roots remain deep within her culture. She is an active feminist and the author of two well-known books, The Woman Warrior (1970) and China Men (1980). In No Name Woman, Kingston explores the treatment, values and life of the women of old-China in the 1920s. In â€Å"No Name Woman,† which is Chapter One of  The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, Kingston learns from her mother that she once had an aunt who killed both herself and her newborn baby by jumping into the familyRead MoreThe Problems Of Racial Identity927 Words   |  4 Pagessaid as â€Å"the significance and meaning of race in one’s life† (4). The question remaining isn’t how much certain groups of people value their racial identity, rather how this assigned racial identity can impact them negatively in life. Within The Woman Warrior, the characters face many obstacles while living in America and coming from a Chinese background. The author of the novel, Maxine Hong Kingston, faces some of the most difficult challenges out of the characters. Being a child in a new country, The Woman Warrior Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts In June 2015, the United States Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) made history by winning the gold medal at the Women’s World Cup. Not only was this a big accomplishment for American sports, as it was the team’s first championship win in 16 years, but the win was also a benchmark for female athletes in professional sports as it showed the potential of these athletes, but also showed many of the obstacles that are currently in their way. Despite having overcome milestones throughout the years in the professional sports industry, there is still a lack of opportunities for women. In addition, many females in the sports industry (including athletes, journalists, referees, and broadcasters) have openly discussed the discrimination that they†¦show more content†¦As a young girl, Maxine is coming to terms with her transition into â€Å"womanhood,† which is complicated by the societal expectations of Chinese girls and the differences between the expect ations for girls in Chinese and American societies. Maxine’s own experiences with Chinese cultural ideas are visible through her interpretation of the story of the No Name Woman when she writes: â€Å"Imagining her free with sex doesn’t fit, though. I don’t know any women like that, or men either. Unless I see her life branching into mine, she gives me no ancestral help† (Kingston 8). Maxine tries to imagine her aunt as a more sexually liberated woman, but her experiences with Chinese traditions and culture complicate her interpretation of these events. In the following chapter, Kingston further discusses the expectations of women in Chinese society and how they differ for the expectations of men. She writes: â€Å"when we Chinese girls listened to the adults talk-story, we learned that we failed if we grew up to be but wives or slaves† (Kingston 19). Many of the talk-stories that Kingston describes would often discriminate against women and were i ntended to teach young girls that their only roles in society were to be submissive and under a man’s control. In the next talk-story, Brave Orchid tells Maxine the story of Fa Mu Lan, a woman warrior