Towards Dialogue

Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior has received both criticism and praise from a variety of audiences both in China and America. The novel is made up of five parts, every one of which can be an independent but interrelated story. Stories and imaginations are woven together; illogical and fragmented memories always bewilder the readers; conflicts between the mother and the daughter, between the Chinese tradition and the America mainstream culture arise one after another. The whole novel is like a dialogue, in which all kinds of consciousnesses contradict and communicate with each other. Dialogue is a distinctive feature in The Woman Warrior.To make clear the meaning of the "dialogue," in Chapter Two, this thesis seeks help from the former Soviet Union scholar Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin's dialogic theory. Bakhtin abstracts "dialogicality" from common dialogues. Conversation and discussion are of "dialogicality," but "dialogicality," to go further, is "a special form of interaction among autonomous and equally signifying consciousnesses" (Bakhtin, Problems 284). In this interaction, these consciousnesses are independent and of an equal position. They work together to make a whole dialogue. Among these consciousnesses, there are relationships of agreement/disagreement, affirmation/supplementation, question/answer, and so on. This paper goes further to the discussion of dialogic forms. In Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Bakhtin creates the division between "great dialogue" and "microdialogue." The novel as a whole is a "great dialogue," which is constructed by the conflicts between different consciousnesses. Besides, dialogue penetrates within, into every word of the novel, making it double voiced. This is the "microdialogue," which is the foundation of the "great dialogue."In Chapter Three, the author makes a detailed interpretation of "great dialogue" and "microdialogue" in The Woman Warrior. "Microdialogue" is the foundation of "great dialogue." The major "great dialogue" in The Woman Warrior is the dialogue between the Chinese tradition and the mainstream American culture. All the other dialogues rotate around this dialogue. This major dialogue in The WomanWarrior is most efficiently interpreted in the dialogue between the mother and the daughter. The dialogue between the mother and the daughter continues throughout the novel and, like a pivot, combines the novel together.The daughter is the narrator of The Woman Warrior. As a second-generation Chinese American, she is at the center of these conflicts. On one hand, she is confused by her champion-talker mother's inculcation of Chinese ethics, which don't associate with her American experience; on the other, the mainstream culture marginalizes the Chinese American, and the racial discrimination reminds her about her ethnic difference. These two forces deprive her of an equal position in dialogue with the outside world, so she becomes an "outsider twice over," and experiences frustration and painful silence when she is young. It is through telling and transforming her mother's stories that the daughter breaks her own suffocating silence and establishes her identity as a Chinese American. This retelling process is accomplished by continuous dialogue and negotiation between the mother and the daughter, between the Chinese tradition and the America mainstream culture.In Chapter Four, this thesis goes further to discuss the significance of dialogue. Bakhtin's dialogic theory sheds new light on The Woman Warrior. It is through dialogue that the daughter manages to identify herself as a Chinese American and articulate her voice; it is through dialogue that the Chinese American are able to break through the monologized America so as to develop a dialogic atmosphere that encourages contradiction and plurality, and then they can find their own place and identity; Bakhtin's theory suggests that in a multi-cultural society, a culture should seek its own development by continuously dialoguing with other cultures.In Chapter Five, this paper at last arrives at the conclusion that: The Woman Warrior builds up a dialogic net, which provides a platform for all kinds of consciousnesses to dialogue with each other in an equal position. Bakhtin's dialogic theory suggests that to dialogue is an effective way for the Chinese Americans to seek their identity.