Kingston's In White Tigers

Words: 1500
Pages: 6
Open Document
indulgence - is a clever blend of myths, fiction and non-fiction that continually conflates and challenges the orthodox notions of genre categories. Perhaps, it is not so much about Kingston’s revelation of a delicate harmony between her two competing cultures, but rather Kingston’s role as a “diarist” to provide only the “most deeply … highest … furthest” kind of “exposition” - repeatedly shuttling between fantasy and specificity, imposing compelling invigorating form on either the chaotic or mundane materials of lives lived - that makes her memoir simultaneously so arousing, yet controversial nevertheless. In the process, Kingston has thus suggested that the dissimilarity between what is autobiographically factual, and what is entirely fictitious …show more content…
Indeed, Kingston recounts the story of Fa Mu Lan with such lush, mystic and wonder. She indulges in and embellishes, pleasurably with a wide grin on her face, the story of a glorious Chinese woman warrior who could excel, all at the same time, in the masculine sphere of warfare, and embrace the traditional female moral obligations and duties at home. Unlike the usually degraded Chinese girl, the woman warrior is filled with strength and honor; Kingston transposes the story in a poetic form, making it overwhelmingly beautiful, whimsical, and almost dreamlike. On the contrary, starkly juxtaposed to the chimerical Chinese culture is her description of her American reality - disruptively prosaic and unimaginative, balanced on a knife-edge of hope and humiliation.
No doubt, Kingston’s version of Fa Mu Lan deviates notably from the ancient Chinese folklore “Ballad of Mulan” that critics condemn the liberties that she has taken with her raw materials and her misrepresentation of the Chinese culture. However, it is arguable that as Kingston attempts to interpret the folklore according to her American sensibilities, her version represents, in fact, a unique perspective of her own, reflecting her distinctive subjectivity, views and experiences regarding the idiosyncrasies of society during that particular time and
Show More

Related Documents: Kingston's In White Tigers

Maxine Hong Kingston's White Tigers

In “White Tigers,” Maxine Hong Kingston explains the struggle she faces to match her American accomplishments and her Chinese identity. Hong Kingston cannot make her American successes fit into the Chinese expectations of women’s success, and thus she becomes lost and invalidated. Hong Kingston writes, “I could not figure out what was my village. And it was important that I do something big and fine, or else my parents would sell me when we made our way back to China. In China there were solutions…

Words 276 - Pages 2

Essay about Boom Boom

ghosts begging for things. The second chapter is called “White Tigers.” In the first section contains the author’s childhood fantasy of living the life of Fa Mu Lan the woman warrior who is actually her mom. In the fantasy she follows a bird up into the mountains until she comes to the hut of an old couple, who want to train her to become a great warrior. As part of her training she spends years alone on the mountain of the white tigers, not eating for days and then eating only roots and vegetables…

Words 1543 - Pages 7

Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior

enhance the lives of his family members. Through his hard work and dedication, he created a path for his children to be born and raised in California. Kingston developed a passion for writing poetry at the age of nine. As she evolved as a writer, Kingston's main purpose for writing focused on her cultural heritage. As the daughter of first generation Chinese immigrants, she captures the fears and obstacles Chinese families encounter on their path towards living in America. Kingston contributed to the…

Words 1912 - Pages 8

Woman Warrior Essay

Woman Warrior Essay Maxine Hong Kingston's novel, The Woman Warrior is a semi-autobiographical collection of short stories that chronicles her childhood in California. It gives the reader a feeling of how it feels like to be a Chinese American girl growing up with traditional parents in a world that is quite different from theirs. Throughout the novel, both she and her mother refer to the outside world as "ghosts." The subtitle given to the book is Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. To figure…

Words 1342 - Pages 6