Maxine and Swordswoman

I found Kingston’s comparison of Maxine and Fa Mu Lan to be incredibly interesting.   At first glance, it seems like they could not be more dissimilar.  Whereas Fa Mu Lan conquers armies singlehandedly, Maxine cannot even prevail over her racist boss.  This seeming dissimilarity is resolved when Kingston writes that, “What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are ‘report a crime’ and ‘report to five families.’ The reporting is the vengeance—not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. And I have so many words—‘chink’ words and ‘gook’ words too—that they do not fit on my skin” (53).  The crucial comparison made by Kingston is that both Maxine and Fa Mu Lan are burdened with words.  While Fa Mu Lan had words of vengeance cut into her back, Brave Orchid crams talk-stories riddled with racial incongruities into Maxine’s head. These stories starkly juxtapose Chinese culture with the American culture Maxine eventually assimilates into.  Her personal struggle lies in making sense of these stories through her depiction of growing up as a first-generation Chinese American.  There is an essential difference, however, in Fa Mu Lan’s and Maxine’s struggles.  Fa Mu Lan can return home after she has fulfilled her duty to exact her family’s vengeance.  Maxine, on the other hand, seems to have so many words to confront that her struggle seems to be never-ending. 

Disconnects

In Woman Warrior, there is a strong theme of cultural, and generational, disconnect. This is especially obvious in the scene where Moon Orchid comes to stay with Brave Orchid and her family.

As Moon Orchid gets settled into her new home, we see how her, Brave Orchid and the children each seem to live in their own separate worlds. Because of this, they are unable to communicate properly with each other and understand the context of their respective actions. Moon Orchid, although she tries, is unable to reach out and fully comprehend her sister's children. Their American upbringing is so completely different from the Chinese culture she grew up in that it is as though they come from another planet. The way Kingston describes these moments seem to really portray this disconnect: "Sometimes when the girls were reading or watching television, she crept up behind them with a comb and tried to smooth their hair, but they shook their heads, and they turned and fixed her with those eyes. She wondered what they thought and what they saw when the looked at her like that...They were like animals the way they stared" (133). We get to see, from how Kingston sets up Moon Orchid's perspective, the complete alienation that she feels from her own family.

Another form of the disconnect is the inability of certain American concepts to be translated into Chinese, and vice-versa: " 'What's the main idea?' 'I don't know the Chinese words for it' " (133). Mannerisms, etiquette, taste--these are just more elements that do not line up, and this does not provide any sense of stabilizing comfort for Moon Orchid. This eventually has a negative impact on her sense of well-being.
After the scene with Moon Orchid and her husband, we see her fall into some sort of extreme paranoia that had not been present before. Moon Orchid's inability to relate to the majority of the people around her contributes to confusion. Kingston describes this as her having "misplaced herself, her spirit...scattered all over the world" (158). The author really emphasizes the consequences of displacing someone and immersing them in a completely different world. Moon Orchid's sense of stability returns only after she (falsely) believes that the people around her in the mental asylum are the same as her, speaking the same language and able to finally understand what she is saying (161).

Maxine and Her Mom

It is not a myth that it is common for mothers and daughters to have strained relationships, especially during a daughter’s teenage and early adult years. In Maxine Kingston’s Woman Warrior, it appears that one of the reasons for the strained relationship between Maxine and her mother is due to cultural differences. By this I mean that because Maxine’s mother was raised in China and Maxine in America, their relationship suffers. Also a result of where each woman was raised, it seems that Maxine and her mother have little in common, while placing value on different aspects of life. While there are many examples of their differences, the first that comes to mind deals with Maxine’s mother telling Maxine that girls were not valued as compared to boys in China. Maxine’s mother goes on to say that “during the war, though, when you were born, many people gave older girls away for free. And here I was in the United States paying two hundred dollars for you." This statement by Maxine’s mother makes me believe that even though Maxine was born in the United States, Maxine’s mother still chooses to follow to Chinese tradition. It is also ironic to me that Maxine’s mother is complaining to Maxine about birthing her, yet Maxine had no control in being conceived.
Other cases of this occur when Maxine’s mother is not proud of Maxine earning straight A’s in school (because this was not valued in Chinese culture for a female) as well as when Maxine is described as being embarrassed when her mother bargains in department stores (in China this would have been normal, yet bargaining is generally not acceptable in the United States).

At the Western Palace

In the section of the book, the struggle to assimilate is put into even more focus. Moon Orchid is brought from China only to be forced to see her husband who has found a new life as well as a new wife. Taking into account Maxine Hong Kingston's last line that states that all of Brave Orchid's children decided to go into math and science , the author seems to be emphasizing the need for strength when brought to a new home. Brave Orchid is the epitome of strength. She seems to never tire at her work and only complains about her sister. Moon Orchid is the opposite of her sisters power. She is distracted by shiny things, her sisters barbaric children, and is not even able to fold a towel properly without a mold. Moon Orchid does not have the strength to face her husband and is ultimately crushed by their meeting and ends up dying in a mental institution for her fear of being murdered. 

Though it may be a stretch, I would really like to somehow incorporate this idea of needing strength to exist, things that we can also find in previous chapters of this book through the narrator and myths, as being opposing the ghost people that are mentioned throughout. I am not really sure how this would work, but it would be neat to find an opposing correlation between the western people even those that came from China who are now ghosts to the purer and more refined described people who have not assimilated. Perhaps viewing the ghosts as not true or only half people who have lost some of themselves and are bad for this reason and comparing them to people such as Brave Orchid. 

If this is not very clear please please leave me a comment and hopefully we can get a convo going that might make this make more sense. 

Thanks,

Joanne

Seventh and Final Blog Post Assignment

By Monday, April 6 at noon: Those of you whose last names begin with N-Z, please post with your responses to The Woman Warrior and/or Chin's article. See below for jumping off points, which you are welcome to use or ignore at your discretion.

By Wednesday, April 8 at noon: Those of you whose last names begin with A-M, please comment on at least one of your fellow classmate's posts.

Jumping off points:

What does Maxine mean when she says that she and the swordswoman are not so dissimilar (53)?

What kind of relationship does Maxine have with her mother?

What is going on with the point of view in "At the Western Palace"?

What's wrong with Moon Orchid?

Why do all of Brave Orchid's children decide to "major in science or mathematics" (160)?

How does Frank Chin explain stereotypes against Chinese and Chinese Americans?

What do you think of Chin's definition of myth on page 29?

What is Chin's problem with autobiography?

Final Paper Assignment

Myth as Controversy in Ceremony or The Woman Warrior or both

Due: Noon, May 6 (or earlier) in my box in the English department (3rd floor Callaway)

As we have discussed in class, the use of myth in both Ceremony and The Woman Warrior has stirred up controversy. Why is this? What is it about the incorporation of sacred stories into secular ones that makes readers intrigued but also uncomfortable? How is such a response affected by the reader's familiarity, or lack thereof, with the culture from which the myths derive? Do myths lose or gain power when incorporated into literature? What kind of power?

These are just some questions to get you thinking about what myth's role is in Silko's and Kingston's works. You don't have to deal with the specific controversies, eg. the issues raised by Allen or Chin, but I do what you making an argument about the role of myth in Silko's and Kingston's works and the implications of it. Why do Silko and Kingston take the risk of using such sensitive materials in their literary works? What is it that myths do that make them worth the risk? In other words, how do you see mythic narratives contributing to their projects in unique ways? How do myths fuel their political statements about minority American identity, feminism, war, etc?

To support your argument about myth's role in the context of literature, please cite AT LEAST ONE of the following thinkers: McCutcheon (remember him?), Frazer, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, DuPlessis, Doniger. You can look to them to help explicate how you see myth working in Silko’s or Kingston’s text, or you may see Silko and Kingston revising or departing from them.

The majority of your paper should consist of close readings as well as careful, articulate, and focused literary analysis that supports your thesis statement. Please abstain from extensive summary.

You are welcome to do additional research, though it is not required. Of course, if you do, cite your sources in the body of your paper and include a Works Cited page. Do not cite from the Internet, though on-line library databases are fine.

Your paper should be at least ten pages in length, double-spaced, twelve-point Times New Roman font and formatted according to MLA research guidelines.

You will each meet with me individually during the week of 4/20 to discuss either a rough draft or a very thorough outline or plan. The farther you are in the writing process, the better I will be able to help you polish your paper into something really impressive and sophisticated. Remember: Difficult ideas and concepts require time to develop, so the more work you do earlier on, the more room you allow yourself to complicate and clarify your argument. Please staple the draft that we work on together behind your final draft.

Allen Article

I guess this blog entry sort of coincides with Claudia's post (and Mike's comment).  I agree with Claudia somewhat that Paula Allen seems to be cheating her profession's mission by not disclosing information she knows to her students, especially when they ask directly about specific events or ceremonies.  At the same time, I understand that she feels a tie to her people's privacy and feels obligated to keep the secrets of her tribe and people.  

I thought it was really interesting that some Indians thought that "preserving tradition in print is not worth the price" (380) and, like in the example that Mike mentioned, dire consequences might befall anyone who openly shared the stories or inside information of the tribes.  Western culture is so obsessed with recording every minute aspect of even irrelevant events that this seems counterintuitive.  To be from a culture who Twitters every little detail, posts blogs or journal entries with the whole world on a whim, and to read about people who would prefer their stories and historical data disappear entirely rather than share them with ignorant outsiders is completely foreign.  Allen addresses the problem between Western culture's [is this the right term? since the Indians are geographically 'western' too] desire to know everything but also want privacy.  I think it is disingenuous to keep information from interested scholars, but some things should be kept private.  I guess that's one of Allen's main arguments--where to draw the line, in teaching and in writing.  

Allen's example with the anthropologist Elsie Parsons who conducted a very sterile and almost-autopsy-like analysis of the Laguna people is the wrong approach.  Allen says Parsons "objectified, explained, detailed and analyzed their lives as though they were simply curios, artifacts, fetishes."  No culture or people can be so precisely pigeonholed.  There is always some exception, and I think that's where science fails in trying to understand different cultures.  There has to be a balance between observations and analysis that is not too scientific, but also not completely worthless.  I think Silko (and the other myth writers we've read) struggle with this balance also, giving the readers enough to be able to grasp the ideas and struggles presented within the cultures, but also keep some information, ceremonies and traditions, mysterious.