Simona Hevešiová
In: Emigration to the English Speaking World. - Ružomberok: Faculty of Philosophy, Catholic University in Ružomberok, 2006. - ISBN 80-8084-090-3. - (2006), pp. 47-62.
1 Celebrating diversity
The enormous diversity of races and ethnic groups which settled down on the territory of the United States throughout the history establishes the country’ s distinctive character often explained through the metaphor of the “melting pot”. Indeed, the massive waves of immigration brought about by religious, political, and economic causes on the continent contributed to the “strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country” (Luedtke, L.S., 1988, p. 8). The concept of ethnicity, thus, becomes the most distinguishing and identifying mark of the country’ s character. However, to define these citizens as minority populations is, according to Luther S. Luedtke, “misleading, for the nation has no clear ethnic majority” (Ibid., pp. 8-9). In fact, the United States gradually absorbed millions of foreigners elliminating the population of British ancestry, the largest specifically identifiable ethnic group. Furthermore, the increase of the minority’ s population is enormous. The fastest growing minority group in the United States, the Hispanic, grew from 22,4 million to 35,3 million, a 58 percent increase between 1999 and 2000. The Asian-American grew by 48 percent in the 1990s (www.encarta.msn.com, 30.10. 2004).
The coexistence of numerous ethnic groups on a restricted landscape provokes many debates. Undoubtedly, the ethnic variety of the US population contributes to the complex patchwork of modern American society. However, the emergence of ethnocentrism carries the issue a major step further. To judge others by one’ s own frame of reference is often a result of unawareness and unintentionally false assumptions. But the interrelatedness of the deceptive judgements and consequent misunderstandings about ‘the others’ is apparent. Moreover, intentional and misleading generalizations about other people’ s cultures cherish the proliferation of ethnic bias.
Nevertheless, the cross-cultural encounters open a new dimension for the diversity based on cohesiveness, recognition and respect of the differences. Otherwise, it can have ruinous consequences. Homi K. Bhabha, for example, posits the necessity of reconsiderating the modes of cultural apprehension: “My position is that you don´t have to first homogenize cultures, and then as a gesture allow different cultural groupings their right to expression. You’ ve got to look at it the other way around. We have to respect difference before we can truly think about the ways cultures can speak to each other”.(http://chronicle.uchicago.edu, 10.5.2006)
The acknowledgement of the differences leads inevitably to the question of their representation. How to capture the essence of belonging to a marginalized ethnic group distinguishable from the ‘majority’ population? What means are there to their disposal? First of all, one thinks of the political representation and more or less pragmatic steps towards one’ s identification. Although these can lead to the actual improvement of the recognition of ethnic reality, they often fail to emotionalize and personalize the issue what is the very advantage of artistic representation.
Therefore, art and literature predominantly, seem to have the power to present the tremendous potentials humans have for being human. The strength of artistic expression lies precisely in the fact that it embodies the essence, the fundamental stones, of the communication bridge. The images that are evoked via language can demonstrate how cultures can relate to each other. Then, to annul, abolish the pervasive idea of the ‘irreconcilable’ differences within a cultural framework, means to look at them in a complementary perspective. Therefore, diversity and variety must be displayed in literature (or art in general) as well.
However, it was only in the 1960s that the discourse of ethnicity started to emerge in the literary field. The essential characteristics of the period named “ethnic renaissance” by A. Robert Lee resides in the fact that ethnic writers succeeded in attracting significant attention from mainstream publishers, critics and readers. In addition, the issue of ethnic recognition brings up some questions that accompany the very process: How does the perception of an ethnic group change after breaking up their isolation? What implications do these changes have for both the mainstream and the “reborn” population?
Moreover, the proliferation of distinctive stories draws attention to the very motives and intentions of the writers. Why does one write? Out of what need does one’s desire to tell stories spring? What does it mean for oneself to hear his/her own voice among plurality of other voices? In words of Amy Ling, “finding one’s voice and telling one’s stories represents power, just as having one’s stories burried is powerlessness.” (in: Wong, S.C., 1999, p. 157). Juxtaposing writing to the basic instinct of human beings, Ling implicitly stresses and elevates the importance of storytelling and its meaning for oneself. She says: “Writing is an act of self-assertion, self-revelation, and self-preservation. One writes out of a delight in one’s storytelling powers, out of a need to reveal and explain oneself, or from the desire to record and preserve experience”. (Ibid., p. 135) Indeed, the textual form provides an intact space for the presentation of the self, for revealing and promoting one’s character, views, intentions, feelings or worries. Words call forth emotions and thus the self is given a remarkable opportunity to be displayed in its complexity and multiplicity.
2 The postmodern self and the narrative
The search for one’s identity and the process of its (re)construction represent some of the most frequent discourses in ethnic writing. Of course, the author’s ethnic background (as in the case of Maxine Hong Kingston) is a rich source of inspiration for the writer and therefore is necessarily reflected in the work, usually playing a dominant role. Furthermore, ethnicity often seems to be the very motive for writing since it stigmatizes its bearer. That is to say, since ethnocentrism is still present in our societies, in the surroundings where (in our case) a Chinese American belongs to the minority and is easily distinguishable from the rest, the ‘stranger’ inevitably faces and has to cope with cross-cultural encounters. These confrontations, then, may result in a strong feeling of alienation which urges the person to locate his or her position within the society.
However, the manifestation of identity within the narrative has undergone a significant shift and resulted in the transformation of the autobiographical genre, the most obvious medium of its representation. The 20th century brought about numerous debates about the history and essence of identity projecting constantly changing and redefined concepts of the self. Since it has been scrutinized within a variety of disciplinary areas, e.g. from psychoanalytical, social constructionist and ideological perspectives but also in terms of its representation in the literary form through the views of essentialists or structuralists, Madan Sarup marked the “widespread, pervasive fascination with identity” as a “symptom of postmodernity” (1996, p. 28)
In fact, the self was exposed to a crucial and dramatic transformation. The (re-)evolution of the self contributed to the alteration of its essential characteristics as the homogeneous and unified to the transitory and polysemic. Thus, the idea of a coherent, centered and integrated self disappeared and was replaced by its flexible, fragmented and ambiguous counterpart. The traditional view stressing the significance of a fixed and stable identity was undermined by a new concept regarding identity as “fabricated, constructed, in process.” (Ibid., p. 14)
Clearly, the postmodern world is a world of dynamism that leads to the reconstitution of the self which no longer possesses stability and fixedness. Instead, contradiction, inconsistency and hybridization take their place. In consequence, identity becomes a multidimensional space in which both psychological and sociological aspects have to be taken into consideration, giving rise to a relational self. Thus, identity becomes a “mediating concept between the external and the internal, the individual and society…” (Ibid., p. 28), adjusting the self-definition to the changing relationships with others.
As it was already mentioned, the notion of autobiography within the new context did not avoid its metamorphosis either. As the self kept adopting a new face, so the medium of its presentation underwent a thorough change in its form and character. The traditional retrospective narrative displaying the events in a chronological order and related to the construction of a unified subject was supplanted by plurality of voices which aimed at the exposure of the gaps and exclusions in the narrative. All the differences, the multiple ‘selves’ within the individual that accompanied the decline of an integrated self called for their acceptance and adequate interpretation.
3 The notion of “I” in The Woman Warrior
In her novel The Woman Warrior (Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts) Maxine Hong Kingston, a descendant of Chinese immigrants, communicates her feelings of displacement and confusions about who she is and in which world does she belong. By (re)telling the stories of her mother Brave Orchid who left China and emigrated to the United States, her nameless Chinese aunt, her mother’s sister Moon Orchid, the famous avenger Fa Mu Lan and finally her own, Kingston articulates her struggle for a solid identity. The apparent conflicts of her two cultural bases force her to consider the possibilities for establishing a meaningful dialogue so that, consequently, a mutual communication can take place. Her ethnic roots represent therefore the engine generating this avalanche of self-discovery which results in her attempt to mediate her struggles precisely via writing. Hence, we can assume that it was the intricacies of being a Chinese American which inspired the writer to articulate her experience through literature.
To trace the birth and formation of a postmodern self in Kingston’s exhilarative is not an easy task. The problem of identity is, unquestionably, one of the major themes of the book. However, the author complicates its status by interweaving the plot with vivid imagery, fantasy and blurry ‘facts’. Therefore, before we start to analyse the narrative structure and search for the voice(s) in the text, there is another fact that directs our attention towards a more complete understanding. Namely, the book became the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. And precisely this last word – nonfiction - provoked a wave of discussions about the very genre of the book.
The question raised by the critics is of crucial interest in our investigation since it provides the answer to the real identity of the narrator. The Woman Warrior definitely challenges and even outsteps the traditional concept of autobiography which tends to follow a linear narrative pattern and maintains a stable narrator. We have already scrutinized the change the autobiographical genre went through in the postmodern era. Indeed, it is no more a unified, chronological and integrated whole but rather a laboratory of hybrids and fragments. However, to what extent fictional elements, imagination, myths and a ‘floating’ narrator are acceptable in a “factual account of a person’s own life” (Wong, S.C., 1999, p. 30)?
Analogously to our previous thesis concerning the transformation of the autobiographical genre, one can exemplify the truthfulness of these assertions by providing numerous evidences from the book. First of all, the reliability of the narrator and the verifiability of the events presented are, at least, doubtful. The readership is dragged into a carousel of “recollection, speculation, reflection, meditation, imagination” (Ibid., p. 32) where the inner world of the narrator absorbs all its attention while the outer reality plays only second fiddle. Kingston herself draws implicitly a parallel to her own writing strategy: “Night after night my mother would talk-story until we fell asleep. I couldn’t tell where the stories left off and the dreams began, her voice the voice of the heroines in my sleep.” (Kingston, M.H., 1977, p. 25)
Yet the fiction and fact dichotomy is not the only peculiarity of The Woman Warrior. Maxine Hong Kingston symbolically manifests her willingness to disclose and thus strengthen not only her own battle for articulateness but also the voices of her whole ethnic literary family. The plurality of voices that resonate behind the narrator‘s “I“ implies that Kingston embraces her ancestors‘ and her forerunners‘ words in an act of self-assertion and supports the thesis that the postmodern self is no longer unified and homogeneous but rather fragmented, polysemic and decentered.
Indeed, Maxine Hong Kingston puts together a mosaic of stories in which one can hardly distinguish a reality-based, lucid fact from a personal, highly subjective perception, illusion or even an invention. But isn’t that a natural consequence of relying on one’s own presentation of events? No matter how objective and impartial the writer tries to be, an autobiographical text (whether romantic, modern or postmodern) unavoidably soaks with the unique, firsthand and thus subjective portrayal of one’s life. Since every writer has the possibility of making a “choice between faithfully recording or willfully distorting this external reality” (in: Wong, S.C., 1999, p. 36) spiced with the flavour of its internal reflection, every single autobiographical work has the right to claim that the author is its only authorized arbiter.
Clearly, the objective that The Woman Warrior purports to be universally representative does not hold out. The reason is simple. In general, an autobiography written by a member of any ethnic group tends to be seen as a “microcosm of the community” and the author as its “exemplar and spokesperson” (Ibid., p. 37). However, the stereotyped delusion that it should reveal the secrets, struggles or simply the richness of their heritage otherwise unattainable to the white population slowly loses its steadiness. Because of Kingston’s ethnic roots, many readers and critics (especially those not familiar with the subject) mechanically viewed the book as a chronicle of Chinese culture and traditions without ever questioning the very source they get the information from. But instead of providing accurate decriptions and reliable accounts of her ethnic background and Chinese culture, the author knowingly blends the traditional material, such as the legend of a female avenger Fa Mu Lan, with her own imagination giving rise to a completely new fantasy. Simply, the autobiographical genre entitles her to be the only master of her reality.
Furthermore, the book is not centered around a single character, the author/narrator herself as we might expect, but it provides a glimpse into the realities of life of several other people, all of them being women. The voice of Maxine Hong Kingston is still heard somewhere in the background but is no more the central one which seems rather atypical in connection with autobiographies. Encapsulating various episodes from the lives of her relatives, Kingston tries to grasp her own personality and thus, finally, accomplishes its transformation. In doing so, she supports Isabel Durán’s concept of the relational self which aims at its construction within a network of numerous relationships.
Nevertheless, individuality still remains the key term in the framework of our discussion. The external reality seems to be of minor importance in The Woman Warrior and no one, except the author, can fully distinguish the real from the fictitious. Having a more intimate focus and being based, besides author’s imagination and fantasy, entirely on her memory, this book (as well as no other autobiography) cannot be fully trusted. In such a case where all the information we get are mediated only from one person’s perspective, Kingston’s unreliability cannot be attacked. So to return to our initial question whether The Woman Warrior should be classified as fiction or nonfiction, one cannot provide a definite answer. It is neither wholly fictional nor factual, but rather a mix of both. In fact, Maxine Hong Kingston succeeded in creating something specific – a hybrid, a combination of reality, visions, imagination, tradition and speculation all interwoven into an autobiographical form.
As the preceding passages demonstrate, the borders between fiction and fact in The Woman Warrior are (intentionally?) blurred to such an extent that the reader can hardly distinguish one from another. The more we are lured into the intricacies of the novel’s peculiarities, the more we become lost in the network of facts, dreams and fabrications. Therefore, the traditional fact and fiction dichotomy is elevated to another level enabling the readers to follow both real and imaginary layers in their complexity at once. What should, then, guide us to the core of the narrative? Does Maxine Hong Kingston offer the readers a compass to rely on?
First of all, the mystery the narrator(s) enfolded in has to be disclosed. Who does stand behind the elusive, multifaceted “I” constantly taking on so many voices? Sometimes curious, imaginative, submissive, the other time rebellious, angry and powerfull. Is it still the same person? Is the reliable? Though one cannot find the answers to these questions immediately, the multiplicity of the voice(s) is impossible to dispute. The narrator is, indeed, oscilating between different poles, masquerading herself (for it is always a woman except the fourth, third-person narrative) only to announce a new role taken on with an endless appetite. However, strictly taken, all of these voices have the same denominator. The shadow of Maxine Hong Kingston is present behind every single word the narrator utters. She is the one possessing the authority to insert the words in the narrator’s mouth.
In addition, the role of the narrator protrudes beyond its general horizons. Resting in the foreground and then disappearing behind the curtain, the position of the narrator is far from being stable. As the stories keep developing, so the self progresses in its creation and transition. The very process, its completion being postponed by every other step, brings about new questions. To what extent is the construction and presentation of the narrator related to the process of unfolding the theme of each chapter? Does the status of the narrator change? How powerful is her influence on the final shape of her own history?
In short, the narrative techniques Kingston uses are rather complicated. The constitution of the self is forced to undergo a long journey until it reaches its “final” face. Despite the fact that the self has to struggle to find its own mode of articulation and that the reader might get confused in the mingling of voices, there is a key to deciphering Kingston’s strategy. Consisting of five seemingly separate units, each of them being a self-consistent portrayal of womanhood, The Woman Warrior presents a compendium of distinctive stories which, to certain extent, allude to the process of identity formation. The readers are invited to witness a fascinating transformation of the “I” pointing to the self which is so elusive, floating and ever-changing. However, what makes this adventure so alluring is the omnipresence of a mysterious voice resonating from the depth of the “I” and the urgency with which it calls for a powerful echo.
By attempting to create the biographies of her ancestors and her forerunners, her own subjectivity and autobiography are being constructed. As the stories of her mother, her aunts and of the legendary Fa Mu Lan develop, Kingston’s search for her roots and her identity culminates.
In truth, the self is characterized not only by its fight for subjectivity but it is also portrayed in its vulnerability and helplessness exemplified in the fates of Moon Orchid and the nameless aunt. Being unable to speak for themselves or denied the right to speak, Kingston gives distinctive voices to these oppressed women who in turn become a part of her. Therefore, the narrator also functions as a mediator, a storyteller and precisely this position enables her to create her own narrative by recording stories which are forgotten, unwritten or unspoken. Simply, her autobio-graphical possibilities are dependent on the dialogues with her predecessors.
To conclude, there is only one and the very same self that is displayed in the multiplicity of voices. These voices belong both to Many and to One at the same time. Their apparent ambiguity and incompatibility unite (however, in their diversity) in the form of a dominant medium. This medium keeps standing in the background, until its final revelation, and filters the discourses in which it is positioned.
4 Stories and identity
The narrative is permeated with fascinating and invigorating stories recapturing and restoring the experiences of Kingston’s precursors and hence her own as well. In fact, we encounter a narrator who resurrects old stories while encompassing and creating new narratives at the same time. In this sense, without giving life to Brave Orchid’s stories and awakening the long-forgotten or oppressed voices, there would be no story reshaping the journey of Maxine Hong Kingston either. Indeed, the relation of storytelling to the construction of one’s identity is being displayed in its complexity here. We have already implied that identities are not fixed and stable but rather processual. So in this case, the thematical and organizational framework of The Woman Warrior resembles a gradually unfolded lifestory held together by a mosaic of ambiguous and confrontational elements. Each story the narrator presents is an effort to enhance the necessity of articulating one’s struggle for self-assertion. That is, before she was able to constitute her own subjectivity, Kingston had to acknowledge and experience the anxieties of her ancestors by listening to and then retelling the stories of their lives.
Despite their healing and vital influence on the self, the stories often represent a minefield hiding unpleasant secrets one does not want to discover. The tension between curiosity and fear of the unknown and unwanted, which is related to Maxine’s Chinese background, is brought to its final point. Kingston writes about her mother’s stories: “I did not always listen voluntarily, though. She would begin telling a story, perhaps repeating it to a homesick villager, and I’d overhear before I had a chance to protect myself…I have wanted to say,‘Stop it. Stop it,’ but not once did I say,’Stop it.’” (1977, p. 86)
Brave Orchid’s stories interpenetrate her daughter’s mind who desperately tries to sort out what is true and what is invented. Moreover, camouflageing delicate episodes of the family history, Brave Orchid forced Maxine to complete the kin-puzzle with her own imaginary inventions which are mere substitutions of the inaccessible knowledge. The search for her ethnic identity is thus complicated by her mother’s ambivalent approach to the truth. Indeed, the allegorical vision of life that constantly reiterates the complexities of what it means to be Chinese does not put an end to this drama of self-construction.
Hence, the confrontation with the stories functions as a filter. It may seem paradoxical but they are both liberating and frustrating for the teenage girl. This dualistic impulses diversify Maxine’s engagement with her mother’s narratives and continually open new discourses. Thus, the stories stand behind her fears, insecurities, disappointment and confusions, on one hand, leaving her without definite answers to her persistent questions. As a little girl, the ghosts from her mother’s tales kept haunting her in her dreams as well as the images evoked by the stories made her feel displaced. She had to learn how to confront the Chinese traditions (or what has been presented as a Chinese tradition) and the “invisible world” she was raised in with her American reality.
Moreover, Maxine has to reconcile with what Victoria Chen calls a “double alienation”. Not only the white Americans perceive her as the ‘other’ and the ‘different’, even her own community intesifies her marginalization. Since she has been born “among ghosts”, she herself is “ghostlike” and this label imprisons her in an alien vacuum. The stories seemingly prolong the distance that keeps her detached in the interzone. For to win this battle, Maxine cannot swallow her words any more. She needs to yearn (and she does) for deciphering the messages hidden in her mother’s narratives and to establish some grounds for her own subjectivity.
Nevertheless, the stories are, on the other hand, both liberating and inspiring for Kingston. Precisely because of the gaps and exclusions in her mother’s tales, she suddenly possesses the freedom to interpret them and even fabricate new ones. Not being tightened by any limitations or constraints, Kingston loosens her fantasy and communicates her stories, her alternatives. By demythologizing the family secrets and consequently her cultural heritage, Kingston poignantly bridges the boundaries between China and America. Furthermore, this act of rebellion enables her to embellish the tales with her own subjectivity and thus create a mysterious alliance with her mother.
To conclude, even though Brave Orchid’s talk-stories can generate confusions and be turned into nightmares, they still can be exhilarating and stimulating. That is to say, Kingston’s creative expression provides her with the possibility to find the missing pieces of the family jigsaw puzzle. Her own identity is being (re)constructed in this process of acknowledging her ancestors’ biographies and facing the ghosts of her ethnic background. In order to localise her position both in Chinese American community and American society, Kingston recognizes and articulates the ambiguity, uniqueness and the importance of the cultural multiplicity embedded in the stories.
Embracing the dichotomies of living on the edge and belonging fully to neither of the sides, Kingston communicates what it is like to be Chinese American and how does it feel to be torn between two different worlds. The cultural bonds are tight but so is the other, the American shell. To achieve stability means to find a sense of belonging and in the case of ethnic minorities it also means to cross the frontiers. For the subjectivity to be recomposed, one has to open oneself to a transformation to take place. And it is through writing that Maxine Hong Kingston exposes herself to this change, however, not repudiating any of the two territories. Instead, she attempts to shake a multicultural cocktail out of Chinese and American ingredients that would quench her thirst for an acceptable compromise.
In short, keeping track of the stories provides the narrator with a necessary perspective which helps her to convert the ambiguous messages into a useful and solid foundation for her self-authority. Not only does the tradition accentuate the importance of keeping the family knot, moreover, listening to, filtering, dusting off and, consequently, writing new stories opens the door to engaging the readers, the outsiders in a meaningul dialogue. Such a conversation can contribute to burning down the walls standing between representatives of diverse cultural backgrounds and enable the deepening of our awareness of cultural plurality and differences.
5 Message from the dismissed
There is no doubt that Maxine Hong Kingston succeeded in mediating the peculiarities of the struggles for one’s identity and communicating the conflicts a member of an ethnic group is necessarily confronted with on his or her path to self-construction. In doing so, she exhibited her awareness of the importance of such an act and, thus, she opened the door for those who are willing to cross the boundaries dividing these two ‘disparate’ worlds. As Cherrie Moraga pointed out, “silence is like starvation” (in: Young, B., 1999, p. 46) and Kingston too fights for eliminating the shortage of ethnic confrontations in a cultural, social and academic field.
In particular, Kingston was not only able to resist the silence imposed upon her both by her mother and by the dominant American culture, she has also necessitated the quest for a resonant voice(s). Finding her own way to advocate the plurality of voices, the writer attempts to capture the very onset of one’s articulateness. In this sense, she obviously exemplifies the ultimate stages in the process of establishing an ethnic-centered discourse. At the expense of demasking her weaknesses, worries and imperfections, even her anger, disappointment and her powerlessness, Kingston implicitly expresses her urgent determination to start an essential, yet inevitable dialogue.
Ethnic literature, therefore, undoubtedly embraces the potential to extend our awareness of ethnic or racial issues and incorporate them into our daily reality. Despite the fact that ethnic minorities were always present as an inevitable component of American society, it was also due to their writing that they could have been noticed, identified and respected. Since the ‘opening’ of the canon in the 1960s, the American readership has been invited to get deeply involved in the lives of their hyphenated neighbours.
Writing themselves into existence, ethnic authors have made the first step towards being recognized and included in the historical process. Moreover, they have attempted to achieve a significant change of their status so that they remain no longer on the margin but rather move to the center. The process of identification and the following public recognition may become the beginning of a new era in which otherness and difference will be respected and appreciated. In words of Patrocinio Schweickart, “literature acts on the world by acting on its readers” (in: Davis, R.C., Schleifer, R., 1989, p. 124) and thus it may establish a discourse which could stop the proliferation of misleading generalizations and prejudices.
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