Voice In The Woman Warrior

One of the most predominant themes in “The Woman Warrior” is finding ones voice. Throughout the book, voice is referenced many times and most often as a disability of the women in Kingston’s memoirs. Being voiceless is not always a defect that one is born with but can also be due to societal pressures and expectations. The women that appeared as voiceless in the book were most often the ones that did not have an identity of their own. They simply led their lives following someone with a voice hoping that they would be able to live under the shelter of other’s voices. Kingston gave voice to women in this book that were not able to speak for themselves and to deny the accusations and taunts of society. She expresses in the beginning of her book how

She shares the struggles of being a Chinese-American woman by telling the readers her story as well as other girls who went through the same thing. Their inability to speak or at lease to speak properly has a lot to do with the Chinese culture. They are taught from a young age that they live in a patriarchal society and they have to submit to it whether they like it or not. The pressure and expectations that are set upon their shoulders may have caused them to become voiceless, it may have caused them to realized that even if they had a voice, they would never be able to use it. Not only were the readers able to get a look into Chinese society but also into typical Chinese families. Families that found girls a burden upon their shoulders, who found feeding cowbirds better than feeding them, who only raise them to one day sell them off to an unknown man. These are the values, traditions, and cultures that Kingston brings forth with her stories, these are the reasons, one realizes, that make all these women voiceless. Not only does she bring to attention how many women and girls are voiceless but also why they are that