Journal 1
"Woman Warrior"

Most people don’t get angry with their parents for the lies they tell about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. In fact, many people grow up and tell their kids the same stories: “You better be good or Santa won’t bring you any presents.” However, even though Maxine Hong Kingston’s mother had stories with the same purpose, the first mentioned in the story (about her aunt) seems inappropriate for a child entering puberty.

The damaging effect of telling a young woman who has just begun menstruating is that the child is only informed of a dark side to a completely natural event in her life. Kingston’s mother obviously doesn’t want her daughter to fall to the same fate of suicide, but at the same time is attempting to prevent her daughter from bringing shame to the family.

In the story, Kingston’s aunt become pregnant while her uncle is away for three years in the United States to send money home to the family. On the night the baby was expected, the entire village raided their home, killed their livestock and destroyed or stole pretty much everything the family owned. The woman had her baby alone amongst the mess, and, later, drowned herself and her baby in the well. Kingston was told never to mention her aunt to her father because the family pretends that she never existed.

In “Woman Warrior” Kingston explores the reasons her aunt may have gotten pregnant – Was she in love, or was she commanded by a man to have sex? She discusses how her aunt managed to remain quiet, not naming the father of her child even as the villagers ransacked their home, and how he was possibly involved.

The moral of this story is the same as the story of Santa Claus: Behave and good things will come; misbehave and you get coal in your stocking. However, such a story about village rage and suicide may do little but terrify the child out of very natural feelings and emotions. How could a child with such information ever feel comfortable having sex, giving birth or even falling in love?

Not all of Kingston’s mother’s stories were so tragic, or perhaps so true. Kingston also discusses swordswomen and the songs her mother taught her. One such is the chant of Fa Mu Lan, a girl who replaced her father in battle and returned to the village alive. Kingston’s mother even discussed the rituals in which women had their feet tied, and that she should feel lucky that she never had to go through that.

Kingston seems to realize why her mother shared these stories with her. They definitely were to save Kingston from shaming herself and the family, but also to give her hope that someday she would not have to be a “wife and slave.” And, since they were in the United States, Kingston seems to believe that her mother wanted her to grow up a warrior woman.

However, Kingston begins to fall into her own stories, fantasizing about how she should become a warrior. In her story, she follows a black bird over the mountains to a small hut, where lives an old couple. The couple offers Kingston, only 7 years old in the story, some dinner and offers to train her to be a warrior. To avenge her village, she agrees to stay. She worked dawn to dusk, and was even left in the woods with nothing and asked to survive, which she does.

Finally, she returns home to her family, where she finds numerous stories circulating to younger girls about her disappearance. One said she was told Kingston was turned into a bird with magic; another said she was told Kingston became a prostitute in the city. Those stories were most likely told to the children to insight fear.

Unlike the story of her aunt, Kingston’s woman warrior fantasy leaves her remembered by the family as well as the village. If she would go off to war and fight in her father’s place, even if she died, her sacrifice would be remembered. What she was doing was good. The shame her aunt brought, was bad and left her forgotten.

Parents tell children stories to teach them what society expects of them, and the punishments for not living within those bounds. However, it would seem some of the stories told Kingston by her mother are more damaging to a child, confusing emotions and the course of nature. Other stories gave her hope that she should become something better than what the society has decided for her.