The Woman Warrior Literary Devices

In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston seemingly creates a theatrical performance where Kingston engages in swordfights against the socio-cultural norms that seek to define the construction of her own identity. The Woman Warrior presents many unique literary devices and motifs that seemingly create a theatrical performance, although the curtain will never rise, and the audience must watch the performance from behind a curtain.
The many unique literary devices provide many important features of the text that seek to define Kingston’s overall feelings without lifting the thin veneer Kingston has strategically placed. Kingston employs a talk-story narrative as a very important narrative device throughout the text. Lightfoot describes the

When Kingston’s mother is in school, she often eliminates ghosts. One day when Kingston’s mother tries to eradicate a ghost she says to the ghost “You will not win, . . . You do not belong here. And I will see to it that you leave” (Kingston 82). The ghost does not belong, and she seeks to dispose of the ghosts. Kingston also deals with a sense of belonging within her own family as her mother appears to not value her highly when in comparison to a slave girl. As Kingston states, “I watch them with envy. My mother’s enthusiasm for me is duller than for the slave girl; nor did I replace the older brother or sister who died while they were still cuddly” (Kingston 97). Kingston does not seem to maintain a high level of self-worth within her own family. Finally, Kingston, when talking with her mother, realizes that existence belongs wherever one moves. Kingston states “Does it make sense to you that if we’re no longer attached to one piece of land, we belong to the planet? Wherever we happen to be standing, why, that spot belongs to us as much as any other spot” (Kingston 127). Seemingly one belongs to anywhere one moves to, no longer one must remain tied to an ancestral socio-cultural norm or a geological location to call home or attached to anything. Kingston seemingly calls everyone to participate in her own performance, yet only the audience with prior knowledge of Chinese American socio-cultural ideals and concepts might fully understand the messages presented throughout the