The Woman Warrior Sparknotes

In reading Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, I was struck by Kingston’s use of the terms “American-feminine,” “American-pretty,” and “American-normal.” In just a few words, she manages to so clearly articulate a phenomenon that pervades the lives of children of immigrants — namely, what it is like to live in a country with cultural norms that are specifically Western, but often treated as universal. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, authors and academics alike have become increasingly aware of this fact and of the importance of intersectionality in feminism, considering that gender roles and beauty standards are shaped not merely by gender but also by class, race,

Kingston’s book The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, first published in 1976, portrays her childhood, her family, and the mythical stories that shaped her upbringing. In this work, Kingston compellingly depicts the intersection of Asian identity and gender roles. Emphasizing how Chinese and American ideals of femininity are often at odds, she writes, “The immigrants I know have loud voices, unmodulated to American tones even after years away from the village where they called their friendships out across the fields. speaking in an inaudible voice, I have tried to turn myself American-feminine” (Kingston 11). Framing her own behavior as a rejection of a longstanding and joyful cultural tradition, Kingston’s language emphasizes the sense of loss and silence that characterizes her attempt at assimilation. She masterfully captures the struggle of creating a “feminine” identity amidst conflicting messages, describing her behavior and development of an outward persona as a conscious

Even the American identity Kingston constructs is not entirely sufficient to counteract the lack of approval from her mother and the rest of her family. She struggles with self-worth, explaining somewhatironically, “I went away to college — Berkeley in the sixties — and I studied, and I marched to change the world, but I did not turn into a boy” (47). Demonstrating how ideals of success vary by culture, Kingston notes that her academic and professional achievements were never enough to make her feel worthy in a family that valued boys over girls. “My American life has been such a disappointment,” she writes. “‘I got straight A’s, Mama.’ ‘Let me tell you a true story about a girl who saved her village.’ I could not figure out what was my village”