Who Is Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior novel, is a semi-autobiographical collection of short stories that chronicles her childhood in California. The main characters, Kingston, Brave Orchid, Moon Orchid, and an unnamed aunt, are all mentally and emotionally abused by the society in both America and China. Kingston is judged and ignore by the people at school because she is Chinese, and in turn blames her mother, Brave Orchid, for her problems. Moon Orchid moves to America with the help of her sister, Brave Orchid, to confront her ex-husband, who cheated on her with a servant and abandoned her. The unnamed aunt gives birth to an illegitimate baby, whom she decides to assassinate because she couldn't take care of her and had no support from the family; immediately after killing her baby she commits suicide. All of The Woman Warrior’s main characters passed through traumatic experiences caused by other people that devalued them, completely making their human minds crumble. The author uses indirect characterization to describe each of the five important characters in the novel. Kingston takes on so many personas that makes it difficult to really know her character traits, throughout the memoir she is sometimes rebellious, verbally lashing out against her mother as a teenager, imaginative, curious, and also anguished. She really
In "No-Name Woman," for instance, Kingston has no information with which to describe her unnamed aunt, so she simply invents her own scenarios. She rejects personality traits that give her "no ancestral help" and imagines those with which she can most closely identify—almost as if she is creating an imaginary friend across ancestral lines.