Maxine Hong-Kingston's The Woman Warrior

Second of all, she is in disagreement with her Chinese upbringing. She feels as if she does not belong there, that she is the black ship of the family: ``I thought every house had to have its crazy woman or crazy girl, every village its idiot. Who would be it at our house? Probably me.

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.

Likewise, the narrator is curious about what her mother is doing because

Anaxandra’s father is able to teach her skills that other women don’t know. She is capable of solving her own problems without any help. When Anaxandra is being chased by the men that came to attack King Nicander, she has enough courage to try and save Callisto. When she can’t save Callisto, Anaxandra is brave enough to jump off the cliff and put an octopus on her head to scare off the men. She is smart enough to stand up to those that hurt the people close to her.

In The Woman Warrior, Kingston uses simile to compare a pregnant Fa Mulan to a powerful man in order to show how she defies stereotypes and is strengthened by something which most would view as a hindrance. During Mulan's pregnancy, she marches with the foot soldiers and wears her bulky armor to appear as a robust and powerful man, and embrace her pregnancy. She uses her physical transformation during the last four months of her pregnancy in order to make herself appear stronger, which is demonstrated when she says, " I wore my armor altered so that I looked like a powerful, big man" (Kingston 39). Following the birth of her son, she immediately returns to battle with her son in a sling on her back, which she describes as, "At the back of

Fa Mulan: After receiving military training from the Chinese army, Mulan mastered a variety of martial art techniques including Tessenjutsu and Bojutsu. In battle, Mulan is an extremely observant, tactical fighter who is capable of improvising a number of different methods to overcome her adversaries . Mulan wields the Jian, a double edged straight sword, demonstrating an expert level of skill. Possessing astounding accuracy, Mulan is shown to be proficient in the use of a bow and arrow.

During times of crisis, women have been marginalized continuously, and although many would like to think so, conditions for women have not changed much over time. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak both reflect that. Women in literature and in real life who deserve lead roles are often forced into supporting roles. Most people understand this but few acknowledge it. Strong female characters such as Liesel in The Book Thief, Penelope in The Odyssey, and Antigone in Antigone need to be honored the same way strong male characters are.

This is significant because the character with the biggest change only speaks twice and is barely represented in the story. The character that goes through this is the daughter figure she goes from unknowing to knowing, this was achieved through repetition. Repetition plays a very key role in this story because it reapplies it and it forces you to engage with the material again. To be honest, this story exemplifies the teaching methods of America. Jamaica formulated a strong tone, and presented it in

As a result Mulan proves to Kingston that women can do anything men can. In reality, Kingston does not know how to face her mother, who repeatedly crushes her dreams of becoming who she wants to be. Brave Orchid even makes fun of her own daughter for trying to follow her dreams. Kingston looks up to Mulan to determine how to face her problems of the Chinese culture. Kingston learns that in order go against the cultural norms, she must first go against her mother, the main cause for her suffering in America.

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a collection of war stories that demonstrates the negative aspects of war, and how the roles and fantasies created for women are far from reality. Although the main focus is on the men and their experiences, O’Brien also puts importance on the way that women move away from their traditional roles - women who are idealized and completely separate from the war and the soldiers’ circumstances and who will be ready to welcome their courageous lovers if they return from the war. Moreover, specifically with one of the female characters, O’Brien shows that similar to the male characters, the women are heavily influenced by the çulture and hostile environment. In summary, through the difference between female

O-Lan however has almost an entire life of conflict. Her first and ongoing conflict is being a woman in Chinese society. O-Lan especially suffers from the hardships of being a woman, and being poor on top of that makes her struggle even worse. So from the beginning O-Lan is working and struggling to become someone more than the stigma of society, but to no success. To matter in her time O-Lan had to give birth to sons, be able work, and have beauty.

In The Woman Warrior, Kingston describes how she overcame a period of silence and low self-esteem in order to illustrate how personal motivation is of greater importance than societal boundaries. Beginning in kindergarten, Kingston went through a period of silence in order to conform to the female peers in America. Societal oppression is the cause of the silence according to Kingston. Kingston fears of not being accepted by her peers as well as deportation back to China, and thus she is silenced. Kingston recalls the manner in which the silence hindered her everyday life in her description of the silence, "When I went to kindergarten and had to speak English for the first time, I became silent.

I landed in Philadelphia on a particularly beautiful spring day in the year 1890 with the intention of visiting my sister and meeting my niece and nephew for the first time. And that's when I met Dao-Ming. When I stepped off the train in Philadelphia, she was there, almost as if she'd been expecting me. A stunningly beautiful Chinese woman, Dao-Ming was petite, yet strong, lithe, yet demure, feminine, yet commanded whatever room she entered.

eyes are muddled and fuddled. Two hares running side by side close to the ground, how can they tell if I am he or she”. These two lines lead to two kinds of explanations about Mulan especially in western modern arts. One is that Mulan is a feminism and these two words are sarcastic comments toward traditional Chinese society and Confucianism teaching because these two words express the belief about gender equality that women are as good as men. The other one is that these two words she says show the individual awaking of her and all she does are supposed to achieve self-actualization.

It is not hard to imagine how difficult for a girl to survive at the soldier’s camp and even fight the enemy army. Mulan was not strong enough as a man, but she was smart and worked hard during the trainnig for the new sodilers. In this book, Mulan was a fornate girl than the real person, she created a avalanche which whelmed the enemy soldiers and ended the war. Meantime, the general finally found out that Mulan was a girl for her injuries. She was abandoned by her comrades, then she found out that the leader of the enemy soliders was still alive and prepare to attack the Emperor.