Maxine Hong Kingstons No Name Woman Essay examples -- Chinese Society

Maxine Hong Kingstons No Name WomanA extremely fictive text whose non-fiction label gives the appearance of being an actual model of Asian American experience in the broader public sphere. (Gloria Chun, The High check)Such a disparaging remark about the misleading temper of Maxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior has been readily refuted, notably by Leilani Nishime, who proposes in her essay Engendering Genre... that it is a text that transcends genre confines it challenges handed-down definitions of genre and demands redefinitions. Whatever the case, No Name Woman (NNW) is remarkable in the way the reader is given(p) a candid social commentary in the guise of an ambitious tale of scandal and oppression. In a vivid representation of traditional Chinese society, Kingston artfully manipulates perspective, or more aptly roughage filter (Chatman, Reading Narrative Fiction 130), to reflect the finish of an inherent society in the vicissitudes of one familys life.The opening scen e itself suggests the structure of the broad(a) story we are immediately presented with a tragic story-in-a-story, or framed-narrative (Chatman, 97), of the narrators illicit aunt. Somehow, the events viewed in retrospect through the eyes of the narrators traditional, conservative mother take care skewed and moralistic, rendered with an objective, instructive voice which complements the primary narrators didactic tones as she takes everyplace the discussion from her mother following the opening tale. A little posterior on, the filter switches almost seamlessly over to that of the aunt, in a radically contrastive retelling of her tale by the (primary) narrator (14). Such smooth filter-character transitions occur oft throughout the text... ...le viewpoints, overlapping timelines and a dominating, though largely implied narrators (possibly authors) slant pass away together to present Kingstons unique view of gender roles and their assimilation into Chinese-American culture a f ar-reaching yet intimate projection of her history, society and self.BibliographyChatman, Seymour. Story and conference Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca Cornell UP, 1980.Reading Narrative Fiction. Ed. Seymour Chatman. sassy York Macmillan, 1993.Chun, Gloria. The High Note of the Barbarian Reed Pipe Maxine Hong Kingston. Journal of heathenish Studies 19.3 (Fall 1991) 85-95.Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts. London Picador, 1981.Nishime, LeiLani. Engendering genre gender and nationalism in China Men and The Woman Warrior. MELUS20.1 (Spring 95) 67-85.