Resumo de The Woman Warrior: Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts

I found a copy of this book in the
back of a used bookstore in west Texas and couldn?t put it down; I thought I?d
discovered the great Chinese-American autobiography. I?ve since seen the title on lists of signal works, but still
I?ve never heard anybody mention or recommend it. And I have trouble understanding why: this masterful,
many-faceted work is illuminating and enjoyable, its details have extraordinary
charm and staying power?details of what will be for many readers a wholly alien
way of life.
In chapter-long, stand-alone
vignettes, Kingston paints artful pictures, of her ancestors, of her mother, of
a warrior from the distant past, of herself, using bits of stories her
relatives have passed down as well as her considerable creative powers, to explore
the ambivalence and, often, the outright anger arising from her confusing
status as an American child of Chinese immigrants. She opens the book with the hair-raising story of an aunt
who was hounded into suicide by her peasant neighbors and then systematically
erased from all records by her family for having a child out of wedlock;
Kingston works to understand her deleted ancestor, whose name she never
learned, trying out under our sickly fascinated gaze a number of possible
storylines and motives for her. In
another chapter, Kingston tells us fantastic stories of her mother Brave
Orchid?s medical education and many adventures as a country doctor in China
around the middle of the 20th Century. Another takes the form of a long, dreamlike folktale of Kingston?s
own composing, told in the first person but based on the story of Fa Mu Lan,
the eponymous woman warrior (whom you may vaguely recognize from the Disney
movie), a reportedly historical figure whose family carved edicts of
revenge-seeking into her back with knives and sent her out to lead
all-conquering armies against tyrants and criminals. Kingston shares the heartbreaking story of her aunt Moon Orchid,
who immigrated to California many decades after her husband and eventually was
coerced by her sister, Kingston?s indomitable mother, to confront him in the
new, American life he built in the long absence of his all-but-forgotten
Chinese wife. And in the final section
Kingston lets us in directly on the turmoil and conflict of growing up ?on Gold
Mountain? (in the U.S.) surrounded by ?ghosts? (non-Chinese), going to
?American school? in the daytime and ?Chinese school? in the evening, hiding
out in Chinatown in a neighborhood of former fellow villagers, choking down the
blood pudding and squid eye her ever-resourceful mother cooked for them,
wondering if perhaps her parents were planning an arranged marriage for her to
the neighborhood?s retarded man, working at the family laundry, working out a
new kind of identity. Kingston is
capable of sustaining many conflicting perspectives (her aunt?s and her
mother?s and Fa Mu Lan?s as well as her own); in fact, it is through this
multitude of voices that Kingston?s real purpose for the book is revealed: as
her unconventional memoirs progress, it becomes increasingly clear (because
Kingston lets us see) that she is manipulating the details of imparted folklore
and family history. She becomes
increasingly frank, boldly exposing her own artifice and casting all she?s said
into doubt?is it true? Is it ?talk-story? (the translation of a Chinese word
for tall tales)? It?s a privilege to
watch her try to work things out for herself.
This is a classic, unjustly
under-publicized, stimulating, shocking, tragic, intense, comic, lyric, by
turns (or simultaneously) whimsical and profound. The picture Kingston paints of Chinese traditions is what you
might expect, both better and worse: balancing every story of Brave Orchid?s
defeat of a local demon is one of Kingston?s hateful uncles, who called
Kingston and her sisters and girl-cousins maggots, and meant it. But, even in the midst of towering
resentments and pain, Kingston is able to humanize those from what is for most
of her readers (and in some ways for her as well) another, unpalatable,
inhospitable culture. And, of course,
the perennial thrill of autobiography is here too: no matter how foreign the
author?s experience, there will be moments of sudden recognition?you too have
felt as she?s felt, done as she?s done, and her descriptions and musings, in
this foreign context, will illuminate your own experience, help you to your own
self-knowledge.

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