668 Kingston, Maxine Hong
women are to be like brothers and sisters to each
other. That goes against the message Kingston’s nar-
rator and other daughters of Chinese immigrants
in northern California receive at school. If they
are to be considered socially appropriate and get
dates in the United States, they need to cultivate a
more overt, yet still respectable kind of sexuality, or
what they call “American-feminine,” which includes
speaking less loud than Chinese, both women and
men, traditionally do.
Further confusion as to what Chinese culture
regards as truly desirable in a woman is gener-
ated by the explicit contrast of Brave Orchid and
her sister, Moon Orchid. While Brave Orchid is
hardworking and intelligent and is thus valuable as
a man’s helpmate, she is not gentle or soft, the way
her useless and timid younger sister is. One can
also assume their other sister, Lovely Orchid, who
owns a shoe business in Hong Kong, is the pretty
one, representing yet another ideal type of woman.
The American-born narrator, presumably Kings-
ton’s double, suffers both from Chinese culture’s
contradictory expectations for women—to be slaves
as well as warriors—and the different standards of
ideal femininity endorsed by Chinese and American
cultures. Her confusion and resultant self-hatred
erupt in the most startling way in the scene where
the young narrator torments another Chinese girl
at school who is “Chinese-feminine” like Moon
Orchid: totally silent and always neat but entirely
helpless. After many years of frustration, the narra-
tor is able at least in part to resolve the intercultural
gender confusion by seeing herself as a woman
warrior who wages battles against oppressors of her
family through the words she writes.
Tomoko Kuribayashi
Sur vival in The Woman Warrior
The theme of survival has several major applications
in Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir/autobiographi-
cal novel. The first three chapters of the novel, “No
Name Woman,” “White Tigers,” and “Shaman,”
depict what is required for survival in Chinese soci-
ety. The first chapter concerns the narrator’s paternal
aunt, whose existence has been forgotten. Her own
family wipes her from memory as punishment for
the trespasses of adultery and ensuing pregnancy for
which she killed herself after her family’s house was
raided by angry villagers. The lesson to be learned
from this story, at least as the narrator’s mother,
Brave Orchid, intended it to be, is that the well-
being of the entire community comes before the
happiness or desires of an individual, especially in
times of hardship like a poor harvest or political
unrest. The value placed on roundness by Chinese
culture is expressed in round moon cakes and round
doorways, symbolizing the importance of communal
harmony and family wholeness for which individu-
als’ rights and freedoms must be sacrificed.
In “White Tigers,” the main character, whom the
American-born narrator imagines herself to be, is a
young Chinese girl who is trained by an old couple
in the mountains to become a woman warrior, skilled
in martial arts, so that she can avenge her family and
fellow villagers against the neglectful emperor and
the wicked baron. She starts her training by learning
to be utterly quiet so that every creature in the world
of nature will let her learn its hiding and fighting
skills. At the mid-point of her 15-year stint with the
elderly teachers she endures a solitary survival test
in which she must subsist on meager provisions and
withstand extreme cold for many days. Later, even
as an accomplished woman warrior, successful in her
campaign against the evil governors and fulfilled in
marriage and motherhood, she must survive on the
battlefield by hiding her gender, as she would be
executed if found to be female.
In the third chapter “Shaman,” the narrator’s
mother in her younger days shows extreme resource-
fulness and bravery, which helps her confront the
resident ghost at a Chinese school for midwives
and earn fellow students’ respect. One major way
that somebody can show courage and strength is
the ability and willingness to eat anything, includ-
ing wild animals and perhaps even monkey brain.
Even in her later days as an immigrant to the United
States, the narrator’s mother cooks such unusual
creatures as skunks and turtles for her American-
born children. It is equally important to be able to
“not eat,” when fasting is the appropriate choice. In
addition to her mother’s detailed example, Kings-
ton’s narrator lists a number of fantastic eaters from
China whose abilities were thought to bring rain
during a draught or conquer evil ghosts.