Ruisha Yang
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
“I refused to cook. When I had to wash dishes, I would crack one or two. ‘Bad girl,’ my mother yelled, and sometimes that made me gloat rather than cry. Isn’t a bad girl almost a boy?”(Kingston 47). By simply isolating the quote from the content, it seems to be describing a lazy teenage girl who’s in denial of doing chores and feeling proud of doing so. However, reading the quote in relation to the novel allows me to discover a different meaning behind the bear text to better understand the story.
Following the “No Name Woman,” Kingston continues her search for her voice and her Chinese-American identity. She reveals the protagonist’s childhood fantasy of living the life of Fa Mu Lan, the woman warrior—one of many talk-stories Kingston heard while growing up. I’ve read various versions of Fa Mu Lan, but the one described in the story has a distinctive plot. Instead of a delighted ending where she had a family, others ended dreadfully that she committed suicides. The story of Fa Mu Lan provided an alternative sense to the Chinese traditional beliefs and the low, degrading status for women in society. The protagonist is trying to find answers from listening to the heroic struggles of Fa Mu Lan to improve upon her current Chinese- American life. According to the quote, she is unwilling to do chores and breaking dishes purposefully while washing them.
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In the beginning, I mentioned my interpretation of the quote given in the real world and accordingly I made assumptions that it was referring to a lazy teenage girl. On the other hand, in the story it’s more complex as it alludes to the protagonist and her actions, reflections upon the life of Fa Mu Lan. I was giving it a certain kind of attention by engaging my mind in the story. I was able to understand the context of the quote with a matter of