North American Women Writers Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior Dr Cathia Jenainati

Chinese immigration to the US 1848 Gold Rush 1869 Transcontinental railroad Anti-Chinese movement in American West 1882 Chinese exclusion Act Before WWII, mostly male immigrants 1941 Pearl Harbour; China-US alliance 1943 Repeal of the Chinese exclusion Act 1943 citizenship to first generation Chinese 1965 immigration and nationality Act 1975 end of Vietnam War

Chinatown in San Francisco in 1882

Chinatown San Francisco in 1970

Cultural concerns Since 1965 greater diversity in Chinese population Linguistic diversity among emigrants but not their American-born children Chinese American are not a uniform minority

Maxine Hong Kingston b. 1940 in Stockton, CA Woman Warrior (1976) China Men (1980) National Book Critics Circle Award Woman Warrior read as a post-modern, quasi-fictional memoir Controversial for many Chinese readers

A Chinese Woman’s response to MHK’s The Woman Warrior “The stories seemed somewhat twisted, Chinese perhaps in origin but not really Chinese anymore, full of American imagination” “What Kingston calls ‘lies’ are nothing more than courteous ways of putting things.” I decided not to teach this book to my Chinese students…

The Chinese woman changes her position, “it is after all, an American story, not a Chinese one.” “Some of my assumptions were wrong from the beginning because I am Chinese.” “Kingston’s purpose is to make use of all these stories to show how a Chinese-American finds her own identity…and how she uses words and stories to rebel against the old and to contribute to the new.”

The Chinese woman adds her voice to MHK’s “In mixing ancient Chinese stories with her own imagination, Kingston has created a new woman who actually challenges old and new” “This warrior, Kingston herself, is bold daring, and rebellious.”

The Novel Narrative strategy mixes myth, legend, and history with autobiography. This is the story of Hong Kingston’s mother Ying Lan Hong (Brave Orchid)