The "Woman Warrior" from Maxine Hang Kingston's novel, White Tigers, was beautifully written. I honestly had fun dissecting the whopping 30 pages for symbolism and character development. It was exciting when the meaning of a puzzling line finally clicked.
Kingston connects herself to Fa Mu Lan by embodying Fa Mu Lan's point of view when narrating her fable. In the beginning, Fa Mu Lan is merely a seven year old girl, oppressed in Chinese culture like so many others of her same sex. The author seamlessly transitions from her own point of view, talking of her mother's "talk-stories" and her advice at the very start of the piece that all women failed if they grew up to be anything but "wives or slaves", to telling the story of Fa Mu Lan, without ever really indicating a change in character. Kingston remains in first person point of view when telling her own personal narrative and the fable of Fa Mu Lan to show that her and Fa Mu Lan face the same obstacles in society as Chinese women. This is significant because Kingston wrote this piece in 1970s, an era in which everyone thought all the wrongs of previous decades had finally been righted by the tumultuous civil rights movements of the 1960s. However, by highlighting the similarities between Fa Mu Lan and herself, Kingston is revealing the sad truth that life for Chinese women living in modern day America is not so different from that of a woman living under the harsh Han dynasty.
The way you start off this blog post is really nice because it's interesting to read your opinion and appreciation for the piece. It is also a more detailed discussion of what we had discussed in class about the author's view point and how it symbolized the character's similarities!
ReplyDeleteI really liked reading your perspective of White Tigers because I thought it was an interesting piece that left me with many questions (you answered some things that I was confused about). Gret Job!
ReplyDeleteNice blog! I didn't catch how she was telling the Fa Mu Lan story in first person. That gives an interesting perspective to the rest of the piece. I also liked how you connected the Asian American culture today, to the Han Dynasty and how it isn't so different!
ReplyDeleteMadeline I liked how you went into a deeper analysis of Mu-Lan and offered your own critique. A way that you could improve is add some more images because some people can't always create images by themselves. Great blog post!
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