Traditions are that of old family tells and stories from our grandparents and great grandparents, as they get passed on to generation after generation they tend to develop and modify to help aid who the stories are being told to and allow that person to benefit from them as the situation develops. This is very common in most ethnicities, however in the Chinese tradition it is important to listen and follow these talk-stories as their elders are telling them. In the memoir, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston, Kingston establishes a relationship between silence and finding ones voice through the talk-stories and Chinese traditions she encounters that truly forms her perspective on finding her own identity as a Chinese American. In the beginning of the memoir, Kingston started off with a story about her father’s aunt that had brought disgrace to his side of the family and to which they now no longer speak of her. Furthermore, Kingston’s mother begins to explain in detail of how her aunt committed suicide along with killing her own newborn. Her mother started the story by first saying, “You must not tell anyone.” (Kingston …show more content…
As Kingston was able to realize what she wanted to do in her life she broke or tried to break from the Chinese norms. From the article, The Woman Warrior: Claiming Narrative Power, Recreating Female Selfhood by Joanne S. Frye, “Kingston attempts resistance by trying to deny her femaleness, especially by breaking the established codes for female behavior: achieving academic success, behaving clumsily, breaking dishes, refusing to cook.” Kingston understood from a very young age that she would not be silent, that she would find her voice and do something with her life to make it