Woman Warrior Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts THEMES AND STYLE

Theme (topics, actually) Birth – mother daughter relationship Culture Clashes – old, new Chinese, American Ghosts – several meanings; ghosts are very real & serious to the Chinese Insanity Power of expression – silence and talk-stories Tradition Women Warriors Misogyny

Style Weaving of past and present Weaving of imaginary and real (book is a memoir (non-fiction), but it often reads like a novel (fiction) – Kingston creates a new genre – the fictionalized memoir Makes up scenarios to explain what happened to the No Name Aunt Changes the traditional tale of Fa Mulan, adding in scenes & making it her own (each teller of a folk tale changes it slightly) What really happened is of no significance to the teller of a talk-story Easy for reader to confuse real and imaginary Pay attention to her verb tense (“the call would come” - fictional vs. “the call came” – real) The way a story is told (who tells it and how it is told) makes a difference in the meaning of the story.

Ghosts Spirits of dead people An outcast Characters of talk-stories All people who are not Chinese

Chapter Titles Pay close attention to the chapter titles – they reveal a great deal and have layers of meaning Chapter 1: No Name Woman – about her aunt Chapter 2: White Tigers – the Fa Mulan story Chapter 3: Shaman – Brave Orchid’s story Chapter 4: At the Western Palace – Brave Orchid & Moon Orchid Chapter 5: A Song for the Barbarian Reed Pipe – Ts’ai Yen’s story Kingston has devised a unique method of combining a family story with a cultural story

Many kinds of silence Silence of insanity Silence of second language learners in American schools Silence imposed on girls & women in a misogynist culture Silence of self-hatred learned when one’s culture is not known or prized by the dominant culture

Kingston’s relationship with her mother Learned her storytelling from her Stories frustrated Kingston because she never knew which were fiction and which were truth After separating from her mother, Kingston is able to return and tell a story with her mother – an act of reconciliation

Questions to consider Who is the No Name Woman that Kingston references in the first chapter’s title? Could she be referring to someone besides her aunt? What does it mean to remember someone? What does memory have to do with storytelling? What is the difference between a realistic novel and a memoir? How would this book be different if it were not subtitled a memoir? What if these stories were told in a chronological order? What effect would this have on your reading experience? Is it even possible to place all of Kingston’s stories on a timeline? Do you feel that your reading experience is different based on whether or not you identify as Chinese and female? How so?