1. North American Women Writers
“Natural and Supernatural”

3. 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

4. Chinatown in San Francisco in 1882

5. Chinatown San Francisco in 1970

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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…

9. 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.”

10. 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.”

11. 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)