Ghosts In The Woman Warrior

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston, is a story of an American daughter of Chinese immigrants. The story in this book reflects on Kingston’s childhood memory of growing up among the ghosts that her mother tells her during her talk-story. There are many stories of ghosts that appear in several forms, both literally and figuratively, in each chapter. There are three primary ghosts that reflect Maxine’s struggle to find her identity while growing up in two different cultures, the traditional culture of her Chinese parents and the modern American culture. These ghosts are, “no name woman,” the sitting ghost, and the ghost of China. These ghosts haunt Maxine and affect her living her “American-normal” (Kingston

The telling of the secret is to test her strength and established realities. Although Maxine’s mother forbid her to tell other people or even discuss it with her father because he never talks about her “you must not tell anyone, what I am about to tell you” (Kingston 3). The beginning of the story shows that her no-name aunt is a ghost of the family after her death and never to be discussed throughout eternity. The ghost of her aunt is present and powerful and she went on and write about it in her memoir. In addition, the ghost of her aunt reflected on her childhood that she doesn’t want to be disowned by her family like the way they did her aunt. For example, when Maxine reaches her puberty age her mother warn her that she should not end up like her aunt “now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humilities us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born” (Kingston 5). This talk-story ghost of her aunt cannot be taken for granted because it brings disgrace to the family and this is why her mother exposed her to it from a young age. Another ghost thing that bothers Maxine while growing is that