From Resistance To Identification: An Interpretation Of The Mother-Daughter Relationship In The Woman Warrior

As one of the most influential and controversial contemporary Chinese American female authors, Maxine Hong Kingston and her works have long been paid much attention to in the literary critical circle. Her first novel The Woman Warrior-Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts was an instant commercial and critical success. Centering on a Chinese American girl's growing-up experiences, the novel combines myth, memory, reality and family anecdotes in the form of talk-story to tell stories of the female members in a Chinese American immigrant family in the American society,which exhibits the Chinese American women's real life and inner world in the American society. This novel not only built Kingston's fame as a creative ethnic female author but also aroused the mainstream society's unprecedented attention towards Chinese American literary works as a whole. It is no exaggeration to say that The Woman Warrior is a milestone in the Chinese American literature. Based on abundant textual analyses, this thesis attempts from feminism and postcolonialism perspectives to probe the theme of mother-daughter relationship in the novel to come to the conclusion that the daughter's resistance to and later identification with her mother is the result of her searching for her sexual and racial identity as an Chinese American female under the double oppression of both sexism and racism in the American society. Placed as a minority in the predicament between the two worlds of Chinese and American, Chinese American women have to realize their situation, take advantage of their unique marginal position and unite to get rid of the oppression they are suffering, step out of the dilemma with confidence and reclaim their identity in their own voice. The whole thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter presents a brief introduction to Kingston's life, works and critical responses to her works and then makes a summery of the mother-daughter relationship represented in the novel The Woman Warrior. Setting in the background of Chinese American females'life in the history, the second chapter makes a general survey of Chinese American females'sufferings under the double oppression of sexism in both Chinese and American culture and racial discrimination in the American society. It elucidates that to tell stories to their American born daughters is the immigrant mothers'way of teaching their daughters the survival experience. And it is through their mothers'stories that the American born daughters get their strength to understand themselves and to seek their own identity. To describe this kind of mother-daughter relationship is a tradition in the Chinese American female authors'writing. The third chapter is an exploration of the mother-daughter relationship displayed in The Woman Warrior. It points out that the daughter's resistance to her mother is a revelation of the author's criticism on the patriarchal oppression in the Chinese culture and the racial discrimination in the American society. In the novel the daughter experiences the process from resisting her mother and her mother's culture to identifying with her mother and finally gets strength from her mother and the mother's culture to come to a reflection on her own identity. It is in this way that Kingston takes advantage of her marginal position to speculate on how Chinese American females should fight against the oppression, step out of the identity dilemma and seek for their own identity. The fourth chapter discusses briefly the "talk-story"narrative strategy Kingston adopts to describe the mother-daughter relationship in the novel. By writing the mother's stories, Kingston creates a close tie between the Chinese immigrant mother and American born daughter. This kind of narrative strategy not only reveals effectively the theme of the novel but also finds a new way for Chinese American authors to make their voices heard.The last chapter draws a conclusion of the thesis. It offers some viewpoints about how to value Kingston's works and points out the meaning of studying it.