《The Woman Warrior》读后感精选

《The Woman Warrior》是一本由Maxine Hong Kingston著作，Vintage出版的Paperback图书，本书定价：USD 14.95，页数：209，特精心收集的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

《The Woman Warrior》读后感(一)：worse than the book "the joy luck club"

总共5个短篇，从文笔和格调上来说是一致的，但是从主旨和题材上来说却是参差不齐

最有名的是第2篇，the white tiger，但是阅读下来的感觉却是怪怪的，神鬼不像神鬼，魔幻现实又不是，很尴尬，估计老外也就是看个新鲜，其实木兰从军的精髓在于从军2字，不在于那种摸不着边际的修仙升级之旅，最多3星；

我个人最看好也最喜欢第4篇，at the western palace， 说是一对姐妹，妹妹在香港收到姐姐的邀请来美国玩顺便寻找她在美国的丈夫，这个丈夫一直给他在香港的老婆寄钱但是自己早已经在美国成立另外一个家庭，姐姐让妹妹鼓起勇气去自己丈夫在美国的家里争取权力赶走美国老婆，而妹妹却一直认为自己的丈夫并没有对不起自己（至少几十年来不断寄钱），也不知道应该如何处理这种局面，而且2姐妹自己的亲兄弟也是有2个老婆的人，冲突在这里展开.....非常好！这篇的主旨和立意非常赞，如果能够扩充写开来，把细节和冲突再强化一下做一个长篇是很有看点的，可惜作者也就是点到为止了，冲突并没有表现的很到位，而且最后的结局我个人也不是很欣赏，来得太突兀了，人的心理变化如果有那么大的落差的话，要么你详细描写这种转变，要么之前的铺垫你要做足，如果都没有就会觉得奇怪....但立意是不错的

剩余3篇毫无亮点，第1篇流水报告，第3篇大杂烩，还莫名其妙插入吃猴脑，第5篇看不下去了没看完，整体而言一般般，英文文笔本身也一般般，和19世纪那些英美文人的文笔相比简直不忍看.....

《The Woman Warrior》读后感(二)：The Great Struggle

哎…为了写作业看的这本书我把作业放上来造福以后也许会写这个相关作业的人当参考吧……有错误就别管我了下面指出下免得误导群众吧咳咳_(:з」∠)_

关于The Woman Warrior 和Obasan两本书的

The Great Struggle

Since ancient times, the struggle of people never stop. Where there is oppression, there is struggle. Human progress is the exchange. Mr. Lu Xun said “Silence! Silence! Erupt in the silence or die forever in the silence. ” We know that in the books we have read, many people died in silence. However, there are still many people of noble aspirations struggling against the situation and struggle for their lives.

After World WarⅡ, a special group became the focus of the

society —— the immigrants in western countries from Asia. In the early years, the group of the people often suffered discrimination and malevolence from local people. They found job difficultly and even their children could not receive a normal education in school. Obasan and The Woman Warrior show the world of that time to us and told us how people struggle against discrimination and difficulties for their lives and thoughts.

Most people in Obasan always keep silent when they meet malevolence and discrimination. But Emily, Naomi’s aunt, is the person who erupts in the silence. She wants to change the situation the Japanese-Canadians live in. So she joins in many clubs and groups and calls at people to remonstrate the activities which are full of racial discrimination. When the government requires them to move to Slocan, Naomi wants to wait for a few days and her father wants to keep the actuality. “ ‘I hate to admit it, ’she said, ‘but for all we hear about the States, Canada’s capacity for racism seems even worse.’ ” (Joy Kogawa 40) Only Naomi’s Aunt, Emily, struggles against the government about moving home. Emily always instills justice and a struggling consciousness into Naomi’s mind. She attends meetings and reports to the government to advocate for Japanese-Canadians. She never gives up to the struggle. Also，Steven，Naomi’s brother, has some problems in his one leg. When he goes to school, his classmates bully and laugh at him. “Stephen whacks his crutch into the grasses, scattering the butterflies.” (Joy Kogawa 145) Steven wants to struggle! So he relieves his feelings with the butterflies. From other side, Steven gives vent to the regime of the Canadian government.

Obasan is talking about Japanese-Canadians’ struggle. The Woman Warrior is a history of Chinese-Americans and a great suffering of the women during the feudal society. From the first story, the heroine’s aunt has been born in a feudal family in China. “Don’t let your father know that I told you. He denies her. Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had been born. The villagers are watchful. ” ( Kinston 5) Everyone in her home thinks her aunt is a shame even her brother because she is pregnant when her husband left to America. In the feudal society, it’s morally corrupt. But the heroine doesn’t think so. She has grown up in America. So her thoughts are totally different. In her thoughts, it’s not a shame. She is proud of her aunt and tells others about this. ”Walking erect and speaking in an inaudible voice, I have tried to turn myself American-feminine. ” (Kinston 11) She struggles against the feudal thoughts through her way. Her aunt struggles against the feudal society through her death. The author wants to describe women’s struggle in many ways. Mulan is a well known heroine in Chinese story. The author adapts from the story to tell readers about her heart of contention. In the traditional idea, women must stay at home and do house work. If a woman shows her face in public, people may think she is morally corrupt. However, in the second story, the heroine is called to become a trainee to an old couple. “ ‘You can avenge your village,’ said the old woman. ‘You can recapture the harvests the thieves have taken. You can be remembered by the Han people for your dutifulness.’ ‘I’ll stay with you.’ I said.”(Kinston 23) It breaks the traditional rules that women can not receive education. When she goes back home, her parents carve words on her back. “We are going to carve revenge on your back. We’ll write out oaths and names.”(Kinston 34) That reminds me of the famous general in ancient time —— Yue Fei. His mother carved “Jing zhong bao guo” on his back which means “repay the country with supreme loyalty”. The author compares the character to Yue fei. She tells us that many women felt the keen tug of patriotism and they always struggle for the rights that they can show their patriotism. The author images that she is Mulan. Their enemies represent racial discrimination. “Then the villagers relinquished their real gifts to me ——their sons. Families who had hidden their boys during the last conｓｃｒｉｐｔion volunteered them now.”(Kinston 36) So the heroine is a brave woman who leads her villagers to struggle against racial discrimination. She struggles against her identity.

Throughout these two books, The Woman Warrior and Obasan, it is evident that there is a reoccurring theme of struggle as a form of making a progress. People struggle for change and their identities. This is historical inevitability that the immigrants struggle for their rights and responsibilities.

《The Woman Warrior》读后感(三)：鬼压床

In The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Maxine Hong Kingston extensively uses Chinese folklore to move along her narrative. Her use of folklore is two-sided: On one hand, she uses real folklore from Chinese culture, giving creditability to her representation of the reality of culture and the people from this culture. On the other hand, she constructs folklore-like plots to serve specific narrative purposes such as giving a lesson or making a point. The question of whether it matters to use real or made-up folklore depends what is her purpose and how this purpose is used in relation to reality. Marjorie Lightfoot argues that reality is immense (57). Therefore, one needs to infer the whole picture through its parts by using imagination. In this sense, “reality is part actual, part fantasy, and that the dividing line is often obscure. Imaginative inference is necessary and unavoidable in the pursuit of knowledge” (58). The use of folklore, then, becomes Kingston’s rhetorical device to infer reality, and this device can be either real or imaginary as long as it serves as a point of entry to explore the immense reality. In Kingston’s words, “I think fiction can be ‘truer’ than non-fiction. … it can be more to the point” (58). This paper will examine her use of the Sitting Ghost in “Shaman,” her “point” of using it and how it represents or infers the reality of Brave Orchid. I will explore this issue by looking at the role Sitting Ghost plays in the narrative of its attack to Brave Orchid, the implication of it, and what does the implication say about Brave Orchid based on her reaction to it.

The folklore of the Sitting Ghost is real in Chinese culture; however, Kingston turns this folklore into reality by portraying the Sitting Ghost as a visible being, incorporating “magical realism” in the narrative. The Sitting Ghost sat on Brave Orchid’s chest, “pressing her, sapping her” (Kingston 69), until she cannot move underneath it. The purpose of personifying and externalizing the Sitting Ghost can be read as a metaphor to oppression. The oppression is not imagined, but real – it literally presses her in a top-down order rather than scare people in their imagination. This materialization of oppression as a real Sitting Ghost foreshadows the oppression Brave Orchid and other Chinese people experience in America, the country “full of machines and ghosts” (96-97). Discrimination and oppression of second-class citizens in America is real and tangible like the Sitting Ghost, not an imagined problem like the myth of the Sitting Ghost. Moreover, Kingston bestows another feature to the Sitting Ghost: inactivity. The Sitting Ghost sits on her like a “Boulder” (70), heavy but still. Being inactive symbolizes an already-established character that does not change. It is already there, and it stays there. Taking this implication into consideration, when Brave Orchid comes to America, she realized an already-established order that spreads all over the country. It is a developed system, where every ghost has a role in the society – “Taxi Ghosts, Bus Ghosts, Police Ghosts, Fire Ghosts …” (97). Ghost, in the context of America, is associated with machines that are robotic and “dead,” matching the feature of inactivity of the Sitting Ghost.

The way Brave Orchid reacts to the Sitting Ghost reveals the reality of her character, which, in this book, represents the “woman warrior” type of Chinese female. When the Sitting Ghost presses on her, she scolds it with strength and toughness and tells it that she is not afraid (70). This reaction provides a modal of dealing with oppression and discrimination – do not be afraid and beaten down by them. The sense of strength and toughness in her character also helped her to survive as a second-class citizen in America, as the second half of the book illustrates. Furthermore, Brave Orchid’s reaction to the second feature of the Sitting Ghost is taking action. She describes what she would do, which she did after she survived the night:

I will pour alcohol into my washbucket, and I’ll set fire to it. Ghost, I will burn you out. I will swing the bucket across the ceiling. Then from the kitchen my friends will come with the lard; when we fire it, the smoke will fill every crack and corner. Where will you hide, Ghost？ I will make this room so clean, no ghost will ever visit here again (70).

The activities Brave Orchid describes sound like a range of domestic chores, and Kingston might intentionally enforces this suggestion by using words that have such implication: washbucket, kitchen, lard, clean. The reader does not know if Kingston is making a reference to a real exorcist ritual, but this is no longer the point. The point is the sense of female empowerment through doing these domestic chore-like activities. It is as if Kingston were suggesting that domestic chores are crucial and powerful, and females who perform these chores in the domestic sphere are strong and in control. When Brave Orchid comes to America, she works in her laundry store. By taking action to take care of her self, she fights against the Ghost of oppression. This action, like her exorcist ritual, is related to domestic chores. She accepts her identity as a Chinese woman and the negative consequences it brings in the then-America, works toward survival with dignity and still keeps her strong character.

The personification of the Sitting Ghost might not be real, but Kingston’s depiction of it with her poetic license allows her to reveal Brave Orchid’s character as a woman warrior. As Granny Younger describes her way of telling stories that they are “truer than true,” the use of folklore – real or made-up – becomes a necessary method to make a point that helps the writer and the reader to explore an immense reality.

Reference:

Lightfoot, Marjorie J. "Hunting the Dragon in Kingston's The Woman Warrior." Melus 13.3/4 (1986): 55.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. New York: Knopf, 1976.

《The Woman Warrior》读后感(四)：女勇士：或一种文化的番易者

汤亭亭到底是中国人还是美国人？提出这一问题有助于为我们在确立小说中中国元素的位置时提供一个视角。对于一部不长的、其主旨也非历史的长篇小说而言，大量出现像胡笳、蔡琰、花木兰、关羽、张仲景、孔子、孙中山、阴（阳）、龙（虎）这样的中国符号意味着什么？思考这一问题使我想起宇文所安关于世界诗歌的一个比喻：处于世界文学共和国中的民族文学，在其运行机制上，非常类似一个国际化的美食广场上的中国菜、意大利菜、日本菜、越南菜、法国菜在竞争顾客过程中获得的效果。（见《前进与后退：“世界”诗歌的问题和可能》）在其中，一些菜因为无法翻译成一种可通约的公共风格而被排除，逐渐沦为影子菜系；而在同一层级上，相同餐馆之间的竞争并不常见；民族内部的口味差异变得透明，比如说，川菜、鲁菜、粤菜失去了其区域特征和命名权，而被想象的、实际上空无所指的、本来没有任何风格特征的‘中国菜’本身，在与其他国家菜系的竞争中获得一席之地，并通过这种外延的差异明确了自己的内涵，它只有在与其他国家的菜进行比较后才会获得新的地域性。相应地，汤亭亭在《The Woman Warrior》（中文译名“女勇士”）中更多地把中国作为一个弱化了内部异质性的整体进行描写，并通过把自传和史诗结合起来，来确立其以自身相对少数化的经历代言全体中国时的合法性。

就像博尔赫斯把庄子的“一尺之棰，日取其半，万世不竭”和秦始皇的“传之万世”糅合在一起，构造了一个梁朝皇帝权杖的故事一样，汤亭亭也以外在于中国的身份，把中国历史上的一些标志性符号进行了不分朝代、不分出处的杂糅，毫不吝惜小说文体子虚乌有的杜撰功能。在她关于中国的互文谱系中，孔子是春秋的，孟姜女是秦朝的，蔡琰是汉代的，关羽是三国的，花木兰是魏晋的，缠足是五代以后的，孙中山是近代的，革命和共运是当前的，还有一些属于中国民间的来源不明的俗语……可以说，《The Woman Warrior》就是一部拼贴的中国文化史。同时这种引用在多数情况下并未形成小说的结构性部件，除了关于花木兰和蔡琰的故事，其他的引文都仅仅属于一种提及（reference），它涉及了大多数中国人耳熟能详的东西，但又并不更深于此；换句话说，这种涉及仅仅是作为背景的涉及，而不是作为知识和情节的涉及，这种涉及在一定意义上甚至是基于对中国文化的偏离。比如第二章White Tigers（白虎山）中关于刺字的故事，是对岳母刺字的反常规的挪写；宣扬传统文化中的孝和忠的花木兰的故事则被改写成一个女权主义者的成长故事；第四章A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe（胡地笳歌）中蔡琰的故事则多半属于道听途说，即使到现在，历史界对于《胡笳十八拍》是否为蔡琰所撰仍然存有质疑。正是由于亚裔美国女性的身份，汤亭亭才可以像阿根廷人博尔赫斯一样，在其小说中实现对中国古代文学传统中的多种母题的杂糅和混淆而又不显得是谬误，随意挪用而不至被视为笑柄，转述一些妇孺皆知的故事而不被视为老生常谈，这是一种新的“诗的特许”，并且形成一种超越时代和地域的风格（与本土小说形成区别），我们不能把故事发生地确定在偏远外省或是华夏的核心城市，也不能把时间准确定位于中国历史上的哪个朝代，小说以文字为媒介编织了一幅地图和一张时间表，在概括性上完美地覆盖了汉人生活区的任何一个省份和任何一个时代。

这种置身海外的身份也决定了她讲故事的方式，使这本书在语气、声调上明显地和中国本土作家区别开来。“I was born in the middle of world war Ⅱ.”（P96，第三章Shaman（萨满））国内作家一般很少这样说，往往习惯性地称同一历史事件为“抗日战争”，而不是在一个共时的层面上从名称上就把它视为第二次世界大战的一部分。就中国人的本土文化心理而言，作为中央之国，是二战其他国家参与了中国的抗日战争，而不是中国的抗日战争参与了第二次世界大战，——后者是一种典型的美国式的说法，使中国仅仅成为世界其他国家的一个虽然起眼但并非特殊的版块。因此可以这么说：汤亭亭的小说不是为中国人写的，她的写法也不是中国作家的写法。她的小说是为了在英文中被阅读的，而不是在汉语中被阅读的。

另一方面，正如叙述者在第一章（No Name Woman（无名的妇人））开头所说的：

”Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty ,insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is China？ What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies？”

身在美国，她不仅不再是中国内部一个有地域特色的叙事者，而且是一个其自身经历与“中国”已经存在距离、甚至相隔甚远的叙事者，因此，这种对中国的代言也被叙事者本人认为是应当受到质疑的。

在类型上，《The Woman Warrior》极其混杂，它把民间传说与家族史诗——属于神话和高摹仿的古典文类，与回忆录-自传——属于低摩仿的现代文类结合起来。小说在内容上大体是对称的，前两章和后两章分别以中国和美国为背景，第三章正好是二者的过渡；前半部分是关于叙述者听说的母亲那一代人的故事，包括溺井而死的姑姑的故事、女战士花木兰的故事，它的故事逻辑是中国本土的，带有强烈的神话和哥特色彩，它也是叙述者本人的《创世纪》；后半部分是美国华裔移民的故事，包括一对到美国生活的姊妹联手对付娶了第二任妻子的丈夫的故事，和生于美国的第二代华裔青少年成长和融入当地环境的故事，重心落在了第二代人身上，它的故事逻辑是属于美洲大陆的，带有强烈的反讽和现实主义色彩，与前半部分相比，它是一部《出埃及记》。叙述者在最后一章总结说：

“Here is a story my mother told me, not when I was young, but recently, when I told her I also talk story. The beginning is hers, the ending mine.”

这句话实际上也是这本书的总结。变化的起源在于对鬼神（ghost）看法的转变。在民间的、乡土中国的视野里，一切都是有灵的，人死之后并非完全不存在，其魂灵还以影子的方式继续与现实世界发生交流和碰撞，作为祖先崇拜和原始宗教的遗留物，鬼神划定了那一代人以及之前（而不是之后）的许多代人生活的半径，塑造了他们看待世界的方式。叙事者的姑姑死后加入了那个属于死者的阴灵世界，并因为“母亲”等人所讲的悲惨故事和“父亲”等人对此的禁止和沉默而对其他人关于河流和枯井的想象发生深刻的影响，她也许是叙述者所属族系内最后一代加入那样一个奇异世界的人。

而作为医生的“母亲”则是这一切心理习惯的终结者，她在书中扮演了祛魅和启蒙的角色。通过亲身呆进一间闹鬼的屋子，她证明了鬼神并非可怕和不可侵犯之物。同时作为讲故事的人，她又上演了一个鲜活的鬼魂生成学的案例，通过想象和杜撰使一群毛茸茸的、无定型的老鼠成为黑夜里无处不在的“坐着的精灵”（Sitting Ghost）。

叙事者在小说前半部分完成的实际上是对“母亲的讲述”的讲述，在文体上，它和中国古代源远流长的“说故事”的传统并无区别，在民间文化中广泛流行的迷信、风水、阴阳、鬼神，可以看作是这一文体的伴生物。一种口头文学总是带有随意性，故事在被诱发的场合偶然开始，又中途被打断，匆匆结束，当你想要刨根究底时，又面临重重故障，最重要的是，叙事者在书中提到，母亲讲的永远只是故事中她愿意提到的那一部分，而且时间不久这部分故事就会沦为祥林嫂的老生常谈。形象更为黯淡的父亲——作为宗法制的代言人，总是试图把故事掩盖起来，叙事者的姑姑就是这样成为无名的妇人的。

作为神话或史诗，这本小说面临当代文学在类似体裁中共有的问题，即如何在混乱时代里塑造出一位英雄（或女英雄）的主人公。汤亭亭采取了一种折衷的、明智的作法，即为现实中的“我”设置一个史诗式的引导者。就像《奥德赛》中引导奥德修斯返回伊塔卡的雅典娜一样，《The Woman Warrior》中的花木兰和蔡琰引导着“我”，使“我”朝着俄勒冈的伐木工人设定自己的生活角色。所以叙事者很快就发现自己成为巾帼英雄（heroines or swordsman）的反面，她讲述的就是关于自己的溃败的故事：

“I’ve looked for the bird. I’ve seen clouds make pointed angel wings that stream past the sunset, but they shred into clouds. Once at a beach after a long hike I saw a seagull, tiny as an insect. But when I jumped up to tell what miracle I saw, before I could get the words out I understood that the bird was insect-size because it was far away. My brain has momentarily lost its depth perception. I was that eager to find an unusual bird.”

这正好跟关于白虎山的神话构成反讽，因而也使小说前后两部分取得了连贯性。

小说的后半部分则脱离了哥特传奇的风格，魑魅魍魉在异国他乡重新安营扎寨，但其活动再也不如在本土时那么让人不安。人物总是生活在早年或是上一代人的意识形态阴影下，他们简单地复制了自周朝和汉代以来的华夏-蛮夷观念，把美国视为野蛮人的国度，自诩来自天朝上国，希望到这里发大财（从Gold Mountain这个地名可见一斑），但是又面临严重的生活危机，包括失语症。At the Western Palace（在西方的宫殿前面）中的两姐妹，或者更确切地说，那位娶了第二任妻子的丈夫和沉浸在被丈夫遗弃的痛苦中的妻子，可以视为是西方文化和东方文化各自的代表。在传统的二元对立观念里，东方总是被塑造为具有女性特质，它在文化上被视为内倾、和平、羞涩、安静、淳朴，而西方则相应于外向、征伐、奔放、热情、粗狂。对东西方文化的性别化视角在这一章里得到重现，决定Moon Orchid 的行为的是伦理，儿童期接受的观念对她的文化设定构成了她的非遗传的基因，使她在应对变迁时手足无措，她的性格也是“东方式的”，不善言辞，懦弱无能，总是处于应付问题的阶段，没有自我实现的能力；“there is a chinese word for the female i ——which is 'slave'”，说的就是像她这样的人。决定她丈夫（以及她姐姐）的行为的则是经济，这是“西方式的”，他们懂得捍卫利益，把婚姻和亲情折算成货币，以为一切都可以这样结算，他们目标明确，执行力强，具有强大的飞散能力（包括隐喻意义而言的繁殖力）。

值得一提的是，作为一个女权主义者，Brave Orchid 的逻辑在一定意义上是失效的，她要求姊妹学自己的样，去餐馆打工、涂口红、学会争夺权利，实际上延续了她所反叛的父辈文化中把女性视为物品的经济学原则。

“there is no profit in raising girls. better to raise geese than girls.”

这是文中引用过不止一次的中国习语，它认为养女婴不是“有利可图”的，所以还不如去养鹅。在叙事者的母亲那一代，这还是一种极为流行的观念。在美国，情形却并非不同，一个女人需要通过涂口红来证明自己是一个“合格”的妻子，这本身即是对父权逻辑的投降和验证。

只有在早期与母亲的冲突中，我们才可以发现Brave 作为一个女权主义者的彻底之处：

“I refused to cook. when I had to wash dishes, I would crack one or two. ”

以及

“even now, unless I'm happy, I burn the food when I cook. I do not feed people. I let the dirty dishes rot. I eat at other people's tables but won't invite them to mine, where the dishes are rotting.”

同时作者也描绘了一些裹小脚的、像古董一样可笑的中国妇女：她们失去了仆人就变得像旱地上的鸭子一样，半里路也走不了，没有了丈夫就只会哭泣。

叙事者则在Brave Orchid的路上走得更远，她幻想成为“a lumberjack in Oregon”（俄勒冈的伐木工），一种男性化的职业。汤亭亭之所以选择女性作为本书的主人公，有非常多的理由，包括她自己的性别身份，包括花木兰和蔡琰作为先驱者的指引，包括“it was said ,'there is an outward tendency in females.'”，这在一个关于移民与适应的文学中显然非常切题。

番易，而非翻译，是想强调在这一文化转移过程沟通中心-边缘的属性和它与经济贸易的可比性。

作品中涵盖了各种各样的沉默：姑姑的沉默、美国子女的沉默、蔡琰的沉默；被割掉舌头的沉默，类似于伯格曼的《假面》的精神分析式的沉默，这些沉默在表达一个人对自己所生活的世界的全部不适上是相同的。它在小说中被视为是一种病症，叙事者说：“I thought talking and not talking made the difference between sanity and insanity.”这也是作者写这部书的理由，“If we had to depend on being told, we’d have no religion, no babies, no menstruation（sex, of course, unspeakable）, no death.”

但汤亭亭也一直面临着不能代言中国的焦虑，而这一核心问题是判断她所讲故事的合理性的基石。“Perhaps the sane people stayed in china to build the new, same society.”也许小说中流落/逃亡到 “蛮夷之地”的人都只是根深蒂固的边缘人。“May the communists light up the house on a girl’s birthday.”这呼应了史诗的家国同构性，个人的出生取决于一个民族的出生，作为个体的女性的自由取决于作为一个性属的整个女人的自由。而那些逃亡者呢？他们是不理智的、疯狂的，所以才最终陷入沉默。这种疾病也许既是精神上的，也是先天的、生理上的？

《The Woman Warrior》以小说形式提供了答案。小说第四章A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe（胡地笳歌）中，蔡琰也给出了答案。现今流传的《胡笳十八拍》中有这样一句：“胡笳本自出胡中，缘琴翻出音律同。”蔡琰感胡人之曲而自作汉歌，又因其四海攸同的思乡怀远的情调而感动了听不懂汉话的胡人，《The Woman Warrior》即是我们这个时代的《胡笳十八拍》，它讲述的是一个文化翻译/番易者——在目前仍处于亏损状态的文学贸易中的悲壮的叛逆。

《The Woman Warrior》读后感(五)：Chinese American Women’s Quest for Identity in The Woman Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston, as one of the most significant Chinese American writers, has made great contribution to feminist movement with her literature works, among which is her masterpiece: The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. Crowned the best nonfiction book by the National Book Critics Circle in 1976, The Woman Warrior mainly describes the author’s own experience as a Chinese American and as a woman, and discusses how her gender and ethnicity affect the lives of Chinese American women. By blending autobiography with old Chinese folktales and thus exposing the typical problems confronted by Chinese American women such as cultural conflicts, racial and sexual discriminations as well as the problem of interaction between Chinese-born and American-born generations, Kingston tries to dig out Chinese Americans’, especially Chinese American women’s values and their own identity.

Maxine Hong Kingston’s view on Chinese American women’s quest for identity and on feminism in her representative work The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts has aroused interest of many reviewers. According to E.D. Huntley, several themes can be dig out from the novel which include: “silence (both gendered and racially constituted); necessity for speech; the discovery of voice; the construction of identity and the search for self-realization; the mother-daughter relationship and the conflicts that it engenders; memory; acculturation and biculturalism; and cultural alienation.” 1 For reviewer Miriam Greenspan, Maxine Hong Kingston captures “the pain of an American-born child who inevitably reject the expectations and authority of her family in favor of the values of the new land” 2. Linda B. Hall describes the book as “remarkable in its insights into the plight of individuals pulled between two cultures”; 3 and Susan Currier writes in Dictionary of Literary Biography that The Woman Warrior is a personal narrative that represents Kingston’s effort “to reconcile American and Chinese female identities”. 4

However, since its publication in 1976, The Woman Warrior has maintained a "vexed reception history that both attests to its popularity and questions it".5 Apart from praises the book received for it expresses female anger, many reviewers criticize it for its misrepresenting of Chinese American women and reinforcing stereotype in the name of feminism. Sau-ling Wong perceives Kingston's "Orientalist effect" 6 to be the result of Kingston's failure to critique patriarchal values or institutional racism, resulting in misconceptions about Chinese culture and Chinese Americans. She also points out, “According to Kinston’s critics, the most pernicious of the stereotypes which might be supported by The Woman Warrior is that of Chinese American men as sexist”. 7 Benjamin Tong openly calls it a “fashionably feminist work with white acceptance in mind.”8 Reviewer Michael T. Malloy thought the book to have an exotic setting, but deemed it too mainstream American feminist, dealing with only the "Me and Mom" genre in her book Biography of Maxine Hong Kingston.9

These critics on Kingston’s feminism are always made based on the view of culture authenticity and with the idea of foreignness and nativeness, most of which do not take the writer’s growing background into consideration. Actually, as one of the second generation of Chinese American immigrants, Kingston gains a mixed cultural background through her efforts of culture reconciliation. This is also the reason for her reconstruction of the traditional Chinese stories. Besides, living under the double pressure of sexual discrimination and cultural conflicts gives Kingston a more unique insight to the idea of feminism. What she tries to express in The Women Warrior is her quest for identity as a Chinese American woman who not only suffers from sexual discrimination but also confronts with culture conflicts. It’s this complex cultural background that has more influence on Kingston’s feminism idea than the gender oppression of the society.

Therefore, this thesis intends to dig out how Kingston reveals Chinese American women’s quest for identity and the painful efforts they make in the background of sexual discrimination and cultural conflicts, and therefore explore Maxine Hong Kingston’s unique view on feminism as a Chinese American woman.

The autobiography The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts mainly shows the life experience of the author Maxine Hong Kingston as a typical Chinese American woman as well as the life of women around her. Just as the title of the book suggests, these women are living with “ghosts”, “ghosts” which come from outside world and are rooted deeply into their inner heart. Sexual discrimination and culture conflicts are the most threatened ghosts they come across. Suppressed by the “ghost” of sexual discrimination, they are forced to grow into a slave and a wife who has no thought and no identities of their own, and culture conflicts make them confused and doubt where they should belong. However, though such ghosts deny Chinese American women’s position as human and put them into such a dilemma, they have never given in. Like Fa Mu Lan and Ts’an Yen, they are the modern woman warriors who are dedicated to pursuing their own identity. With their strong mind and hard work, the first generation of Chinese American women manage to help the family settle on the foreign land and prove that women can be independent to men. Their daughters, who are more aware of women’s inferior positions to men and emigrants’ bicultural dilemma, succeed in breaking away from their destiny as useless housewives and silent aliens, and flourishing their lives in the foreign land by communication and reconciliation. Through painful efforts those Chinese American women finally drive those “ghosts” out from their inner heart, get spiritually free and truly achieve their quest for identity.

As an autobiography, the book actually reflects how the author herself has perceived herself and pursues her own identity under the pressure of sexual discrimination as well as with the influence of culture conflicts. By exploring Chinese American Women’s quest for identity in The Women Warrior we can not only to get a better understanding of life experience and the inner world of Chinese American women who share the same ancestor with us while living in a different land with a total different culture, but also can gain information about the female writer’s feminism value with bi-cultural background.

It must be pointed out that, though sexual discrimination and cultural conflicts have been clearly reflected in the book, and the protagonist has finally completed her self-reconstruction, there are still hesitation and disconfirmation in Kingston’s mind when she tries to reconcile cultural conflicts. This is because Kingston totally recognizes American culture while perceives Chinese culture with a relatively negative view. Thus the Chinese traditional stories described by the protagonist have a sense of backwardness and Chinese American women in her book achieve their self-reconstruction mainly by Americanizing Chinese culture. If the author can give a further study on Chinese culture and treat American culture and Chinese culture equally, her way to reconcile cultural conflicts and reconstruct Chinese American women’s identity will be smoother and more affirmative.