Analysis Of Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior

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“The Woman Warrior,” written by Maxine Hong Kingston, an autobiography but with Kingston’s unique blend of perspectives could be categorized as a creative non-fiction. I read this novel as a girl’s journey through discovering her “voice”, after being silenced for so long. The book was separated into five chapters, that read more like short stories. Whilst there were only five chapters, the last seemed to be the only one we actually zero in on our author. Throughout the book, we learn about Kingston through her family, but after analyzing the text, I understood that after the tyrant and ridicule that she faced from her family and friends, it was easy to observe that Kingston truly was a warrior. She faced mental and physical abuse, that ultimately silenced her, but rather than retreating into a safe haven she chose to persevere through her hardships in order to write a better story for herself. By persevering Kingston proved herself to be a voice, for the “voiceless” women. …show more content…
We establish physical abuse when it is revealed that Kingston’s mother “cut my tongue” (in reference to Kingston) with an object that is unknown to the author. But in a way, this cut-tongue helped her find her voice in a way of her remembering her abuse her mother put her through regardless if she knew much like a ribbon tied around a finger. There were also plenty of instances of mental abuse throughout, “The Woman Warrior”. In one instance we hear the “wealthiest village wife,” exclaim to Kingston that, “she has an ugly voice,” (Kingston 192), we later hear Kingston say, “and she was right,” (Kingston 192), the way the girl addressed Kingston’s voice is just another reason of why Kingston never spoke up, she was bullied into thinking that her voice was “ugly” so she should not speak. We also witnessed numerous instances of her mother’s torment toward Kingston throughout the novel as
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