Maxine Hong Kingston's use of talk stories in The Woman Warrior emphasizes that individuals will find a more fulfilling life if they defy the traditional gender norms place on them by society. While contemplating beauty standards in Chinese society in “No Name Woman” Maxine Kingston thinks, “Sister used to sit on their beds and cry together… as their mothers or their slaves removed the bandages for a few minutes each night and let the blood gush back into their veins” (9). From a young age girls are expected to be binding their feet and are told that it is to look beautiful, but in reality that is not why. When a womans feet are bound they are restrained and silenced. These girls could be free and happy but they are restrained by men through this binding. Kingston reveals another example of how defying gender roles can lead to a better life in her story “Shaman.” As her mom is …show more content…
Kingston has rarely seen independent woman and they seem to be very happy every time she’s encountered one. Kingston dreams of one day being able to be like the happy independent woman in the pictures. “A job and a room” seems so simple, but in a life where Kingston is told she can be a wife or a slave this seems like quite the luxury. In another example Kingston, through Fa Mu Lan, reveals how one’s life is more fulfilling if he or she defies the gender norms. In “White Tigers,” Fa Mu Lan is preparing to leave to war as she “[puts] on my men’s clothes and armor and tied [her] hair in a man’s fashion. ‘How beautiful you look,’ the people said. ‘How beautiful she looks’” (36). Fa Mu Lan has to dress as a man, because in China she is not allowed to fight in an army. She pursues what she wants even though she must dress as a man to do so. Fa Mu Lan decides to do what she wants to do without regarding what society thinks she should do because that’s what will make her the
Such as having to have small body parts, as said in the book, ‘my nose is small isn’t it.” (Napoli pg 33). This is just one of the many times throughout the book where, Wei Ping has to have another small body part to please a man. This is different in our culture because, us men do not set a perfect standard for girls, to be very small and little.
Gail Wallace completed a research experiment with several African-American women about their experiences of oppression. A theme that occurred throughout the women’s interviews was how they did not associate themselves with the victim role (286). The commonality between those women, can reflect Esi and Opokuya in their given circumstances because with the effort being put into trying to balance their lives, they do not complain about how tough the circumstances are. Modernity is challenging for Esi and Opokuya because their “husbands are impervious to their feminist thinking” and have no sympathy towards their daily challenges (Curry 180). Ginette Curry includes an interview with Ama Ata Aidoo regarding Changes, about the desire to have a life,
Over the course of a person’s life they will grow, learn, and change. In Natasha Chang’s Memoir Bound & Western Dress, there is a character whose life story emanates this. The book is based on the interviews the author has with her great aunt – Chang Yu-i. Natasha explains how Yu-I went through many trials and tribulations throughout her life but through it all became a better person. One of Yu-I’s earliest struggles was growing up in a very traditional household. Although she believed firmly in the rules she was taught Yu-i always longed for something more.
Over the course of time women’s gender and social status has limited their abilities to thrive, live, achieve and educate themselves. In Isben’s Hedda Gabler, Tagore’s “Punishment,” and Ichiyo’s “Separate Ways” women reflect the limitations placed on them because of gender and social status. Alhough, Hedda, Okyo and Chandara live in different worlds and different class they still share similar outcomes due to their restrictions. Nevertheless, all three women have different motives and outcomes along the way. Isben’s Hedda Gabler, Tagaore’s “Punishment, and Ichiyo’s “Separate Ways” present the limitations of women through gender and social status as an effect on their decisions and outcomes.
A defiant one—a warrior, in every sense of the word! Kingston wants her journey, being raised traditionally a “slave” by her parents, she wants to become a warrior. In the beginning of the chapter she describes how a woman could become a warrior and fight for their family, but then I feel as if she stops and looks at her surroundings and asks, “Where are these warriors?” and “why didn’t my aunt fight back?”. The author explains that maybe women were so dangerous that they must have been “bound,” or enslaved to the duties for their husbands.
Burak defines gender socialization as “the process of interaction through which we learn the gender norms of our culture and acquire a sense of ourselves as feminine, masculine, or even androgynous” (Burack, 1). According to Burack, people of different genders behave differently not due to biological factors, but due to socialization that teaches individuals to behave in a particular way in order to belong to a certain gender. For example, women may tend to be nurturing, not because they are biologically programed to be caretakers, but as a result of society teaching them through toys and media to act as mothers. In this way, gender becomes a performance based on expectations rather than natural behaviors or biology, a phenomenon called “doing
The Woman Warrior, Memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts, explores Kingston’s identify formation in relation to her mother and female relatives. Kingston uses the first person to narrate five distinct short stories. Each of them contains a central female character. The unique feature of this book is the rearrangement of the traditional Chinese myths, legend of Fa Mu Lan and Ts’ai Yen. The combination of fantasy and reality is closely intertwined in the stories.
Should women be allowed in combat? Women should be able to serve in combat if men can. I will prove that women are equal to men and they have the strength just like men. People say one of the main reasons they don’t want women in combat, is Physicality. Physicality is a main component in combat, you have to have it to be in it.
During this week, we have covered numerous topics, none more prominent than the oppression of women. Everyone had different opinions, allowing me to take into account different views on the issue. In one of the texts we examined, “Oppression”, Marilyn Frye, a philosopher, debates the subjugation of women. She states the cultural customs that causes oppression of women. I do agree with her view that women are oppressed, but I do not agree that it is just women.
things they can't help?” A memorable quote by the well known author CS Lewis in his novel Till We Have Faces, a question that could stick in the back of one's mind, always on the edge of one's thoughts. Author, Maxine Hong Kingston, in her collection of stories, The Woman Warrior, memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts has a clear dissenting voice that displays criticism of the heavily impressed upon idea of shame of femininity and female sexuality. She displays the harmful effect shame can have as a powerful force used to control women to maintain them as the submissive sex. Her short stories show multiple times that shame is a driving power in the story.
Pauli Murray’s Proud Shoes tells the story of Murray’s family as they developed through segregation. After the death of her parents, Murray is taken to live with her grandparents, Robert and Cornelia Fitzgerald. Proud Shoes focuses on the life of Robert and Cornelia and how they experienced life differently due to their individual situations. This book discusses how race and gender played key roles in the life of Robert and Cornelia. Through this discussion, readers are able to understand a broader American life based on individual experiences and express topics on gender identity and gender difference.
In the essay “The No Name Woman” by Maxine Hong Kingston, the story of living in a traditionally male-dominated Chinese society with a very dysfunctional family structure is told. The villages would look upon the men as useful, and women as useless to their society. Kingston, the main character, learns this first hand from how her aunt was treated. Kingston’s aunt, The No Name Woman, is victimized by a male-dominated society by being shunned for an illegitimate child. As a woman, the odds were automatically against you in their society.
This novel is also autobiographical. Throughout history, women have been locked in a struggle to free themselves from the borderline that separates and differentiate themselves from men. In many circles, it is agreed that the battleground for this struggle and fight exists in literature. In a