{"id":235,"date":"2009-11-18T13:58:23","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T18:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/?page_id=235"},"modified":"2010-03-01T10:09:06","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T15:09:06","slug":"job","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/journal\/past-issues\/issue-1\/job\/","title":{"rendered":"The Woman Warrior: A Question of Genre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jenessa Job<\/a><\/p>\n

Download this article<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1975, Maxine Hong Kingston published her critically acclaimed autobiography, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts<\/em>, which describes her experiences and struggles while growing up as a Chinese-American girl in California. The actual genre of The Woman Warrior<\/em>, however, has been widely disputed among critics. In fact, epitomizing the genre debate, the book itself is labeled \u201cFiction\/Literature\u201d on the back cover, while the front cover proclaims the novel\u2019s acquisition of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Critic Patricia Blinde refers to The Woman Warrior<\/em> as \u201ca collage of genres\u201d and describes the book thus: \u201cIt is at once a novel, an autobiography, a series of essays and poems. But while the work capitalizes on the conventions of various genres, it also evades the limitations of any one genre\u201d (qtd. in Lightfoot 58).<\/p>\n

In her article \u201cAutobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour? Maxine Hong Kingston\u2019s The Woman Warrior<\/em> and the Chinese-American Autobiographical Controversy,\u201d Sau-ling Cynthia Wong collects and discusses criticism from numerous scholars who dismiss The Woman Warrior<\/em> as a work of fiction clumsily disguised as autobiography. For instance, Benjamin Tong describes The Woman Warrior <\/em>as \u201cfiction passing for autobiography\u201d (qtd. in Wong 249), and Jeffery Chan accuses Kingston of \u201cdistributing an obvious fiction for fact\u201d (qtd. in Wong 249). One of Kingston\u2019s especially vocal critics, Frank Chin, objects to what is possibly the most noticeable fictionalization in The Woman Warrior<\/em>: Kingston\u2019s distortion of the Chinese folk story of Fa Mu Lan. Chin accuses Kingston of twisting the Fa Mu Lan story to suit her own stereotypes, and he states that the distortion \u201cis simply a device for destroying history and literature\u201d (3).<\/p>\n

In \u201cAutobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour?,\u201d Wong writes that, \u201cOn the most obvious formal level, [The Woman Warrior<\/em>] violates the popular perception of autobiography as an ordered shaping of life events anchored in the so-called external world\u201d (250). Admittedly, The Woman Warrior<\/em> does not follow the template of traditional autobiography. Even Kingston herself admitted in an interview that, regarding genre, she finds the normal boundaries too confining and prefers to take an unconventional approach:<\/p>\n

I think that in every one of my books I had to create a new way of telling what I had to say. And I feel that I break through pigeonholes of what\u2019s fiction and what\u2019s nonfiction, of what an autobiography is. My next thought is trying to figure out a way to integrate fiction and nonfiction. (qtd. in Fishkin 791)<\/p>\n

It is also interesting to note that it was not Kingston who decided to label The Woman Warrior<\/em> as nonfiction. The decision was actually made by her publisher, who \u201cneeded to define a category for The Woman Warrior<\/em>, and suggested that nonfiction was more marketable\u201d (Huntley 24). Kingston only agreed to this when her publisher pointed out that even poetry is categorized as nonfiction (Huntley 24). Despite this, Kingston deliberately placed the word \u201cmemoir\u201d directly in the title of her book, which indicates that even though she acknowledges that The Woman Warrior<\/em> is not purely nonfiction, she still considers it autobiographical.<\/p>\n

Therefore, even though the critics who argue that The Woman Warrior<\/em> should not be labeled as autobiography do see the elements of fictionalization which Kingston indeed added to the book, they\u2014especially Chin\u2014fail to grasp the reason behind these fabrications: Kingston\u2019s exaggerations serve to create an accurate depiction of her thoughts, her feelings, and her experience as a Chinese-American child. Upon examining The Woman Warrior<\/em> and comparing the book to two theories of autobiography, it is clear that although Kingston\u2019s work contains numerous elements of fictionalization, at the core it remains an autobiography. Kingston uses embellishments of fiction as mere devices to accurately portray her personality and her confusion during her coming-of-age. Kingston\u2019s unusual yet unique strategy and style combine to create an artful whole that beautifully embodies Maxine\u2019s <\/sup>coming-of-age and her childhood struggle to find balance and voice.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

The theories presented in the leading chapter of Roy Pascal\u2019s Design and Truth in Autobiography<\/em> offer strong support for The Woman Warrior\u2019<\/em>s status as an autobiographical work. First of all, Pascal repeatedly emphasizes that, regardless of the factual accuracy of the details, \u201cThe value of an autobiography depends ultimately on the spirit of the writer\u201d (19). In other words, if the autobiography lacks a defined personality behind the words, then it is valueless. In The Woman Warrior<\/em>, Maxine\u2019s personality is consistently present: she is imaginative, perceptive, and confused. In the first chapter of the book, Kingston illustrates the imaginative side of Maxine\u2019s personality as Maxine speculates about No-Name Woman, the aunt who was obliterated entirely from the memory of her family for committing adultery and subsequently becoming pregnant. Maxine muses:<\/p>\n

Fear at the enormities of the forbidden kept her desires delicate, wire and bone. She looked at a man because she liked the way the hair was tucked behind his ears, or she liked the question-mark line of a long torso curving at the shoulder and straight at the hip. For warm eyes or a soft voice or a slow walk\u2014that\u2019s all\u2014a few hairs, a line, a brightness, a sound, a pace, she gave up family. (Kingston 8)<\/p>\n

Although Maxine\u2019s mother, Brave Orchid, tells her only the basic details of No-Name Woman\u2019s story, Maxine uses them as springboard to imagine her aunt into existence. Likewise, the manner in which Maxine responds to Brave Orchid and Brave Orchid\u2019s \u201ctalk-story\u201d\u2014verbally relayed stories based upon Chinese myth and fact\u2014shows Maxine\u2019s perceptivity. For example, Brave Orchid tells Maxine of a helpful slave girl she bought in China for only fifty American dollars, and she complains that she had to pay two hundred American dollars to the hospital for the birth of Maxine. \u201cMy mother\u2019s enthusiasm for me is duller than for the slave girl\u201d (82), Maxine comments. \u201cAnd it was important that I do something big and fine, or else my parents would sell me when we made our way back to China. . . . You can\u2019t eat straight A\u2019s\u201d (46). Yet by adding that straight A\u2019s can\u2019t be eaten, Maxine admits that as long as she is a girl, her accomplishments, no matter how big or how fine, will never satisfy her parents. Maxine\u2019s inability to please her Chinese parents and simultaneously achieve American success parallels the conflict she faces as China and America play tug-of-war with her cultural identity. She must learn to balance the two extremes, to settle this confused side of her personality.<\/p>\n

The above examples show that Kingston indeed weaves personality into all aspects of the book\u2014a critical characteristic of autobiography, according to Pascal. Moreover, Pascal characterizes autobiography as something that \u201coffer[s] an unparalleled insight into the mode of consciousness of other men\u201d (1). The Woman Warrior<\/em> definitely accomplishes this, though perhaps in a way that does not correspond to the typical autobiography. Instead of relaying the events of her life, interpreting them, and explaining their significance, Kingston tells her story in an episodic manner, often jumping from one event to another without overtly clarifying the connection. She also does not always state her thoughts directly. Nevertheless, Kingston\u2019s unusual mixing of fact with fantasy and talk-story reveals Maxine\u2019s experience rather than obscures it. The reader must sort through the conglomeration of stories and separate fact from fiction, just as Maxine must grapple with the difference between the real and the fake:<\/p>\n

Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things you are in Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies? (Kingston 5)<\/p>\n

Kingston leaves many questions unanswered to paint Maxine\u2019s confusion so vividly that the reader, forced to experience uncertainty alongside Maxine, cannot ignore it. In this way, Kingston unwaveringly exposes the reader to her \u201cmode of consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Pascal\u2019s characteristics of autobiography support The Woman Warrior\u2019<\/em>s status as an autobiographical work, they alone are not sufficient to refute the critics who consider the book fictional. This is because Pascal\u2019s criteria\u2014a defined personality, insight into \u201cmode of consciousness\u201d\u2014are broad enough to apply to many works of fiction, particularly novels. What, then, distinguishes The Woman Warrior<\/em> from a novel?<\/p>\n

If the theories from H. Porter Abbott\u2019s article, \u201cAutobiography, Autography, Fiction,\u201d are also applied to The Woman Warrior<\/em>, then the book\u2019s status as autobiography becomes clearer. One major facet of Abbott\u2019s theory states that \u201cautobiography will always lack in its protagonist the kind of crisp identity one finds in characters belonging to the well-made plot. . . . The identity it seeks to express is always blurred\u201d (609). This concept coincides well with The Woman Warrior<\/em>; it reflects Maxine\u2019s identity confusion. Less obviously, it explains Kingston\u2019s autobiographical strategy. Kingston does not describe her life as a linear progression from birth to adulthood. Instead, she begins with the story of No-Name Woman, continues with a fantasy of herself as the fabled Chinese woman warrior Fa Mu Lan, describes the life of her mother and the advent of Brave Orchid\u2019s sister in America, and closes the book with a chapter that is, finally, specifically about herself. Only the last chapter is entirely and exclusively about the life of Maxine. However, all of the chapters relate to her indirectly. In \u201cHunting the Dragon in Kingston\u2019s The Woman Warrior<\/em>,\u201d Marjorie Lightfoot explains the arrangement of Kingston\u2019s chapters:<\/p>\n

Kingston presents discrete reminiscences that do not focus directly on her own immediate experience, except in one case. But all the stories have affected her life, necessitating analytical and imaginative responses to a variety of events. (59)<\/p>\n

For example, although most of the events in \u201cShaman\u201d revolve around Brave Orchid and even take place before Maxine\u2019s birth, it is appropriate that Brave Orchid have a prominent presence in The Woman Warrior <\/em>because of her enormous influence in Maxine\u2019s life:<\/p>\n

To make my waking life American-normal, I turn on the lights before anything untoward makes an appearance. I push the deformed into my dreams, which are in Chinese, the language of impossible stories. Before we can leave our parents, they stuff our heads like the suitcases which they jam-pack with homemade underwear. (Kingston 87)<\/p>\n

Maxine\u2019s head is \u201cstuffed\u201d with Brave Orchid\u2019s talk-stories. During the daytime, she banishes Brave Orchid\u2019s tales from her mind. Yet at night, these stories\u2014stories of boxes of ashes next to the birth bed lest the newborn baby is a girl, stories of babies born with defects abandoned in an outhouse to die\u2014haunt Maxine\u2019s dreams. Under Brave Orchid\u2019s influence, Maxine carries her suitcase full of Chinese \u201cimpossible stories\u201d with her in America; her mother, and China, are always present. Similarly, \u201cAt the Western Palace\u201d tells the story of Maxine\u2019s aunt, Moon Orchid, and her arrival in America to live with Maxine\u2019s family. Not only is Maxine absent during the major confrontation of this chapter, but she also is not even narrating. She slips into a third-person role, shifting the focus from herself to Brave Orchid, Moon Orchid, and the cultural clash which the chapter represents. \u201cAt the Western Palace\u201d describes the collision of two extremes: China, in the form of Moon Orchid, and America, represented by Brave Orchid\u2019s children. Brave Orchid acts as the mediator between the two, attempting to harmoniously balance the two poles\u2014just as Maxine must learn to do.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, in \u201cAutobiography, Autography, Fiction,\u201d Abbott stresses that the primary difference between autobiography and fiction is the presence of a distinct ending\u2014or lack thereof: \u201cStanding analytically apart from his narrated self, [the author] is aware that insofar as his narrative is about himself it can have no conclusion to give it final shape\u201d (609). This lack of \u201cfinal shape,\u201d according to Abbott, also explains why the protagonist in an autobiography cannot have an identity as \u201ccrisp\u201d as the protagonist in a fictional story. A comparison of the ending of The Woman Warrior<\/em> to Abbott\u2019s theory defends an autobiographical reading of the book. Kingston ends the last chapter, \u201cA Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,\u201d with talk-story: \u201cHere is a story my mother told me,\u201d she writes, \u201cnot when I was young, but recently, when I told her I also talk-story. The beginning is hers, the ending, mine\u201d (Kingston 206). Talk-story as a conclusion is indefinite simply because talk-story itself is indefinite. Yet, it is an appropriate ending for The Woman Warrior<\/em>, not only because talk-story is a mixture of fact and fiction like the book as a whole, but also because this particular talk-story is partially Brave Orchid\u2019s and partially Maxine\u2019s. This symbolizes the balance established at the end of the book, as Maxine learns to come to terms with her Chinese-American identity.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Kingston\u2019s falsification of the Fa Mu Lan story does not disqualify The Woman Warrior<\/em> as an autobiography. Abbott declares, \u201cHistorical truth or falsity are important only insofar as they express the identity of the author\u201d (613). Chin, however, clearly thinks differently and protests strongly to Kingston\u2019s alterations to the story:<\/p>\n

Kingston takes a childhood chant, \u201cThe Ballad of Mulan,\u201d which is as popular today as \u201cLondon Bridge Is Falling Down,\u201d and rewrites the heroine, Fa Mulan, to the specs of the stereotype of the Chinese woman as a pathological white supremacist victimized and trapped in a hideous Chinese civilization. (3)<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, Kingston does embellish the Fa Mu Lan story. She takes the foundation of the ballad and transforms it into a radically different, much more complex story in which Fa Mu Lan spends years learning to become a warrior, has a child, keeps the baby with her during battle in a sling beneath her armor, and allows her parents to physically carve Chinese ideographs into the skin of her back as symbols of revenge. However, according to Abbott, since Kingston\u2019s modifications to the story do not obscure her identity, they are tolerable. Contrary to \u201cdestroying history and literature\u201d as Chin claims (3), Kingston\u2019s version of Fa Mu Lan is highly symbolic, and the \u201cWhite Tigers\u201d chapter contributes greatly to the overall themes of the book. Rather than appreciating the emblematic success of Kingston\u2019s version of Fa Mu Lan, though, Chin misinterprets this rendition, especially the tattooing of Fa Mu Lan, as \u201cethical male domination or misogynistic cruelty being inflicted on Mulan\u201d (6). This interpretation is flawed: the tattooing is not performed simply because Fa Mu Lan is a woman. Fa Mu Lan\u2019s parents say, \u201cWe are going to carve revenge on your back. We\u2019ll write out oaths and names. . . . Wherever you go, whatever happens to you, people will know our sacrifice\u201d (Kingston 34). Misogyny is entirely absent from this scene. Rather, the carvings represent revenge\u2014as explicitly stated by the parents in the book\u2014in the form of words:<\/p>\n

The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them. What we have in common are the words on our backs. . . . And I have so many words\u2014\u201cchink\u201d words and \u201cgook\u201d words too\u2014that they do not fit on my skin. (53)<\/p>\n

This quote is Maxine\u2019s comparison of herself to Fa Mu Lan. Maxine acknowledges that she has the potential to express the words on her skin\u2014an appropriate metaphor because as Maxine struggles to find her cultural balance throughout The Woman Warrior<\/em>, she also learns to find her voice. Maxine\u2019s likening of herself to Fa Mu Lan foreshadows events in the closing chapter, \u201cA Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,\u201d when Maxine fights against her own silence. This conflict culminates with an explosive confrontation between Maxine and her mother, in which Maxine finally verbalizes the frustration she feels with Brave Orchid\u2019s talk-stories and constant cutting remarks about Maxine\u2019s appearance, intelligence, and future. To be able to put her thoughts into words at last is a drastic step which represents the discovery of Maxine\u2019s voice\u2014the voice that will strengthen and mature to become Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior<\/em>. By dismissing Fa Mu Lan\u2019s words as misogyny, Chin overlooks the symbolic nature of Kingston\u2019s version of Fa Mu Lan and its relation to the rest of the book; his interpretation is invalid because he does not realize that Kingston\u2019s Fa Mu Lan fantasy actually shows Maxine\u2019s desperate desire to break the mold of the typical woman, just as Fa Mu Lan does, and the potential words Maxine carries with her during her silent childhood.<\/p>\n

Maxine\u2019s potential words eventually become The Woman Warrior<\/em>, Kingston\u2019s autobiography. Critics have indeed debated about The Woman Warrior<\/em>\u2019s genre for years, claiming that the book\u2019s fictionalizations disqualify it as autobiography. Nevertheless, careful comparisons of Kingston\u2019s style, strategy, and passages from the book to the theories of Abbott and Pascal demonstrate that beneath the outer shell of exaggerations and embellishments, The Woman Warrior<\/em> is autobiographical. Kingston\u2019s fictionalizations simply serve to strengthen an already powerful tale, transforming a life story into a work of autobiographical art.<\/p>\n

Notes<\/h2>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In this essay, the name \u201cMaxine\u201d will relate to the protagonist who narrates the story, while the name \u201cKingston\u201d will refer to the author writing the story.<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/h2>\n

Abbott, H. Porter. \u201cAutobiography, Autography, Fiction: Groundwork for a Taxonomy of Textual Categories.\u201d New Literary History<\/em> 19.3 (Spring 1988): 597\u2013615.<\/p>\n

Chin, Frank. \u201cCome All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake.\u201d The Big Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature<\/em>. Ed. Jeffery Paul Chan, et. al. New York: Meridian, 1991. 1\u201318.<\/p>\n

Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. \u201cInterview with Maxine Hong Kingston.\u201d American Literary History<\/em> 3.4 (Winter 1991): 782\u2013791. Web. 9 April 2009.<\/p>\n

Huntley, E.D. Maxine Hong Kingston: A Critical Companion<\/em>. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001.<\/p>\n

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts<\/em>. New York: Vintage Books, 1975.<\/p>\n

Lightfoot, Marjorie J. \u201cHunting the Dragon in Kingston\u2019s The Woman Warrior.\u201d MELUS <\/em>(Autumn\u2013Winter 1986): 55\u201366. Web. 8 April 2009.<\/p>\n

Pascal, Roy. Design and Truth in Autobiography<\/em>. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1960. 1\u201320.<\/p>\n

Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia. \u201cAutobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour? Maxine Hong Kingston\u2019s The Woman Warrior<\/em> and the Chinese American Autobiographical Controversy.\u201d Multicultural Autobiography: American Lives.<\/em>Ed. James Robert Payne. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992. 248\u2013279.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jenessa Job Download this article In 1975, Maxine Hong Kingston published her critically acclaimed autobiography, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, which describes her experiences and struggles while growing up as a Chinese-American girl in California. The actual genre of The Woman Warrior, however, has been widely disputed among critics. In fact, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1355,"featured_media":0,"parent":1804,"menu_order":11,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1355"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1354,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/235\/revisions\/1354"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}