Appreciation of female warrior's works

The parents of Chinese girls represented by "I" in The Woman Warrior are the first generation of Chinese immigrants in the United States. They are deeply influenced by China's traditional culture and bound by traditional ideas. In order to survive in the new land. They study English hard and get to know the local customs, but deep down, they can't give up China culture and tell their children the traditional ideas inherent in their minds. However, the second generation of immigrants grew up in American society and received education in American public schools. The traditional concept of China passed on by parents conflicts with their accepted concept of American cultural values, which confuses them. The white society does not fully accept the yellow race. They live between two cultures, and their cultural identity cannot be clearly defined, which adds to their confusion.

The heroine "I" in The Woman Warrior is also confused about two cultures. China people's life and daily habits mentioned in their parents' stories are also very different from children's life style and concepts in the United States, and some details even make children feel scared. After the "medicine delivery" incident, "I" directly and profoundly felt the conflict between China's traditional concept and American educational concept, which made me feel at a loss. The western pharmacy sent someone else's medicine to my home by mistake. When my mother saw it, she felt that "sending medicine" was an ominous sign, which was reflected in the traditional concept of China in her mother's bones. She thought it was an unexpected trouble and would curse the whole family for getting sick. Therefore, western pharmacies should be asked to do some remedial measures, such as sending candy to drive away the bad luck brought by medicine. She insisted that "I" go to the western medicine store and taught "I" how to negotiate with the pharmacist. In fact, from beginning to end, "I" knew that the pharmacist didn't understand my behavior as his mother thought, but thought he was begging from him. "I" think that this is the pharmacist giving us charity, and my mother thinks that "she taught the foreign devil pharmacist etiquette". In this conflict between the two cultures, "I" completely felt the confusion on the edge of culture. Although my mother and pharmacist both know my thoughts, I can't explain them clearly. There is no way to solve the depression caused by cultural conflicts.

The little girl, the protagonist in The Woman Warrior, didn't understand the difference between the sexes at first, but my family and Chinatown always wanted me to be a "gentle" woman. In this process, "I" gradually understood the low status of women. As the first generation of immigrants from China, the different treatment parents give their children will confuse their daughters and cause inner discomfort. The birth of my younger brother brought me many gender differences. When my brother was born, "I" asked my parents if I rolled eggs on my face, gave me a full moon and sent photos to my grandmother when I was born. With the growth of age, "I" became more aware of the inequality between men and women, which deepened my growing confusion. Language is the main carrier of gender discrimination in our society. "Baby girls are like maggots in rice", "I would rather raise silly geese than baby girls", "Raising daughters is like raising cattle and birds", "Raising daughters is a waste of time" and "Girls must be other people's wives" are often heard, saying that I hate the law.

Language represents the connection between people and the world, and the silence of Chinese American girls in the book represents their marginalized position in the mainstream society. They speak the American language and have the American way of thinking, but they have the faces of China people. They lingered on the edge of two cultures for a long time and were oppressed by feudal patriarchy. They are confused about this marginalized status, so they generally choose aphasia and silence. "I" was silent in the first year of entering American kindergarten. But the result of silence is that the questioned IQ has problems, and those with low IQ will be more discriminated against in society. As a result, silence actually further aggravated their marginalization. The silence of girls in China is not really unable to speak. They are as noisy as Hong Zhong in Chinatown. They can read the text together, fight with each other and even make a hullabaloo about in the school in China. It can be seen that their silence is not that they can't speak English, but that they lack the courage and confidence to make a sound in the mainstream society, so they can only use silence to protect themselves who are already in a weak position. Make a weak resistance.

China women living in the United States can easily feel the double confusion and pressure from Chinese and American culture and gender. China people deliberately avoid the influence of China culture. I long to be a real American, but I find it difficult to integrate into the mainstream American culture. Then I begin to realize the necessity of maintaining China's tradition. In American society, Chinese people have a low status and have experienced the tragic event of being excluded; At the same time, they were born and raised in the United States, educated in American public schools, and educated in mainstream American culture and values. Therefore, in a multicultural environment, it is difficult for them to solve their confusion and then wake up. In order to find the answer, they should learn to integrate different cultures in two cultures and two worlds.

At the end of the book, the lyrics are well translated, which just symbolizes the integration of different cultures. The ultimate wish of "I" is globalization, a way to get rid of marginalization and a way for Chinese American women to establish their own cultural identity. The first, second, third and fifth chapters of the book are all narrated in the first person, and the fourth chapter is narrated in the third person, which gives readers the impression that the author is calm and objective, and even can be said to be "looking on coldly". If we say that in the first three chapters, the author is leading readers to feel and integrate into the story at close range with the experience and feelings of "I"; Then, in the fourth chapter, the author calmly pulls himself out and, as a bystander, enjoys this short play about Yue Lan's tragic fate from a distance with the readers. In this way, the author, as a participant and a bystander, tells the story to the reader from two angles: short distance and long distance.

The parody of Mulan in Maxine Hong Kingston's works retains the contents of China's classical literature, such as honoring parents, joining the army as a father, and disguised as a man. However, through parody, the Confucian thought of loyalty to the monarch and patriotism advocated in China's classical literature is transformed into a Hollywood-style heroine image that pursues free love, realizes women's liberation and realizes personal value. Secondly, Maxine Hong Kingston imitates the specific plot of her mother-in-law's tattoo. The tattooed person changed from her mother-in-law to Mulan's father, and the tattooed person changed from Yue Fei, an anti-gold hero, to Mulan, a heroine. The words on the tattoo changed from "loyalty to the country" to an oath of revenge. The words tattooed on Mulan's back always remind her not to forget her China identity, to defend her race and to remember her history. These words are "like an army, like my army".

"Collage" Maxine Hong Kingston skillfully uses collage, a post-modernist creative skill, from China's classical literature, myths and legends, Mao Zedong's peasant uprising, land reform in red China to personal experience, immigration, generation gap and feminist movement, and integrates China culture with American literature, China tradition with American reality. The world she wrote is a pluralistic and open world and a mosaic of cultural integration. In the last chapter of "The Mad Song of Qiangdi", Maxine Hong Kingston borrowed the image of China historical figure Cai Wenji and recreated the classic image of Mulan in a collage way. In Maxine Hong Kingston's works, Cai Wenji is no longer a sad woman who was unfortunately robbed at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, redeemed by a large sum of money after marrying the Huns, and separated from her mother. Instead, she is portrayed as an emotional woman who loves her husband and wife, fights against the enemy and misses her motherland. Maxine Hong Kingston's remolding of Cai Wenji's image shows that Chinese-American women, who are on the edge of American society, are no longer silent in the face of the collision between Chinese and American cultures and the rolling feminist wave, making their own voices boldly and actively seeking their own identity.

Maze. Maxine Hong Kingston created an intricate and dazzling disordered structure in The Woman Warrior. In the second chapter "White Tiger Mountain", "I", as a girl in China, was inspired by Mulan's story and decided that "I must be rya". Immediately after the author's stroke, "I" became Mulan, pretending to be a man in battle. There is no transitional hint or reminder between "I" and Mulan, which confuses readers and makes it difficult to distinguish fiction from reality, thus reflecting the double discrimination of race and gender suffered by Chinese women in American society. In the third chapter "Witch Doctor", "I" tells the bizarre story of my mother catching ghosts in the dormitory when she was a student. After her mother told the ghost story, Maxine Hong Kingston wrote: "When the smoke cleared, I think what my mother meant was that she and her classmates found a bleeding piece of wood at the foot of the bed." This reader just had the feeling of seeing the sky through the clouds, but he was lost again because of my questioning and comments on my mother's words. There is neither a clear answer nor a turning point in the novel. This labyrinth of writing skills with images or intentions highlights the uncertainty of the novel.

A scattered narrative. Aunt anonymous, the protagonist in the first chapter of The Woman Warrior, never appeared in the next four films. Instead, the protagonist changed from Mulan's "I", mother and menstrual moon to Cai Wenji's "I". This scattered structure gives readers a vague sense of seeing flowers in the fog. Maxine Hong Kingston did not adopt the linear narrative mode between chapters, which made the novel leap forward, and different protagonists appeared alternately without the same narrative background, subverting the grand narrative of traditional novels. She connects all kinds of scattered fragments together, which makes the theme of the novel self-evident, that is, the transformation process of China women getting rid of the marginal status of American society and integrating into the mainstream society of the United States, describing their courage and responsibility and describing their difficult situation in the cultural attack between China and the United States.

Intertextuality. In The Woman Warrior, intertextuality is first manifested in the parody and collage of Mulan and Cai Wenji in China's historical stories. Secondly, intertextuality is also manifested incisively and vividly in plot and even detail description. In the second chapter "White Tiger Mountain", "I" went into the mountain to practice and met the "White Rabbit". The rabbit jumped into the fire and turned into rabbit meat for me to eat. I ate rabbit meat and knew in my heart that the rabbit had made self-sacrifice for me. This is not only reminiscent of the early Buddhist scriptures depicted in Dunhuang murals, but also the plot of "Sa lamenting that the prince gave his life to feed the tiger". In the novel, the "tiger" in Buddhist scriptures is transformed into "I", and the "Prince Sachin" in Buddhist scriptures is transformed into "Little White Rabbit". The story of The White Rabbit coincides with the classic western fairy tale Alice in Wonderland. This confusion of characters and plots in Chinese and western stories highlights the intertextuality of novels, which shows that Chinese Americans have integrated the interweaving of Chinese and American cultures into real life and literary creation.