Woman Warrior Sparknotes

Neel Khanna
Mrs. Meahl
IB English III
August 11, 2014
Beginnings in The Woman Warrior The Woman Warrior is a collection of memoirs in which Maxine Hong Kingston writes about the people and events which help shape her thinking and her girlhood growing up as a Chinese-American. Kingston discusses these most salient events and idols in five separate chapters, including the first chapter in which Kingston reveals the fate of her father’s sister to place the reader in the midst of things, effectively grabbing the reader’s attention. The chapter progresses forward with the introduction of the themes of fear, bravery and the Chinese culture, all of which resound throughout the book. By beginning her book with an important moment in Kingston’s

The main characters in Kingston’s memoir include Brave Orchid, Moon Orchid, and even Kingston herself; showing how she acts and changes throughout the course of her life. Kingston portrays these characters in different ways which aid the reader in understanding the characters more deeply. For example Kingston depicts Brave Orchid with an intimidating and strong demeanor whereas Moon Orchid portrays fright and timidness. In this way Kingston is also able to show how the characters in her autobiography foil each other. Moreover Kingston describes the mannerisms, habits, movements and gestures while also portraying the inner thoughts of the characters allowing the reader to perceive the characters in their own

This is an important fact as Henry James would see it because autobiographies often employ first-person singular to narrate events and he writes that it is an “accurst autobiographic form” and such a point of view “destroy[s] the necessary detachment between the writer and his subject (Macauley and Lanning 138). This is worth noting as this statement highlights the disadvantages of the use of using such a point of view and is a reminder that using multiple point of views, such as in The Woman Warrior, allows the reader to understand the situation. This technique allows the author to let the reader understand and formulate his or her own opinion without forcing the reader to think a certain way. In this way, Kingston effectively interlaces a variety of different points of views such as first-person, second-person and third-person throughout the novel to allow the reader to view the stories and events from different perspective, each with its own advantages and