Analysis: The Woman Warrior

been scared and just following orders “If you tell your family, I’ll beat you. I’ll kill you (Kingston 7).” Kingston tries to imagine the other extreme as well. “It could very well have been, however, that my aunt did not take a subtle enjoyment of her friend, but, a wild woman, kept rollicking company” Kingston continues, “Imagining her free with sex doesn’t fit, though. I don’t know any woman like that, or men either (8).” This story and her portrayal of the events that led to her aunt’s suicide were the beginning of Kingston’s path to ending the silence and discovering her own identity. Kingston recognizes the injustice that her aunt, who she named the No Name Woman, received. Being a woman, she would have been blamed for the affair. She
Kingston would yell and cry, saying she was not a bad girl but realized that she may well have just said she was not a girl, implying that all girls are bad (Kingston 46). She knew the world would treat her differently but she was strong-minded and refused to fit into these gender norms. The essay titled The Woman Warrior: Claiming Narrative Power, Recreating Female Selfhood, touches on this point as well, stating “At times in her childhood. Kingston attempts resistance by trying to deny her femaleness, especially by breaking established codes for female behavior: achieving academic success, behaving clumsily, breaking dishes, refusing to cook (Frye 2).” Kingston also writes “isn’t a bad girl almost a boy (Kingston 47)?” She would do things that were against the norm like saying she wanted to be a lumberjack when she grew up (47), just to make the point that girls do not have to into a specific mold. Even as Kingston got older, she refused to cook for people; she would let the dirty dishes pile up and burn the food when she cooked. It is not that she was not capable of doing these things, quite the opposite. She was capable; she just refused to do the things that were expected of her just because she was girl. In the final chapter of her memoir, Kingston tells of trying to be as undesirable as possibly when her parents would bring suitors to meet
Throughout her memoirs she recounts the many times that derogatory comments were made towards her or the other woman and girls in her life. At one point, while eating dinner her grandfather calls her and all the other girls maggots. He is shouting and asking where his grandsons are. (Kingston191). Girls are told that there was not profit in them, that they were no better than geese and that discipline should not be wasted on them (Kingston 46). It is said “When fishing for treasure in the flood, be careful not to pull in girls (Kingston52).”It is no wonder Kingston grew up with this false belief that she was not good enough, just because she was born s a girl. Kingston sadly writes, “I am useless, one more girl who could not be sold (52).” This statement shows readers that girls were of no value and their lives were of no consequence. Throughout her memoir, Kingston tells stories and relates memories that reinforce her determination to break out of gender roles and find where she belongs in a misogynistic culture. A great example of this is the way she retells the story of Fa Mu Lan, as if she herself is