Communication And Silence In Maxine Hong Kingstons The...

A member of the Executive Committee of the Vegetarian Society once questioned Gandhi, â€Å"Why is it that you never open your lips at a committee meeting? You are a drone† (Cain 189). Though the world today certainly knows of Gandhi, his peers once saw him as a drone as a result of his silence. Cultures linked with silence can conflict with other, more vocal cultures: a prominent example is the silence of Asia in contrast with the openness of America. Maxine Hong Kingston delves into this clash in her 1976 memoir The Woman Warrior, throughout which a young, insecure girl develops a voice of her own, gaining an increased appreciation for her Chinese-American heritage in the process. The world that she lives in values open communication, often†¦show more content†¦Two items are not the same—they are not comparable. Employing the word â€Å"different† to describe the countries of America and China demonstrates Maxine’s mother’s awareness of t he numerous dissimilarities between them. In her 2012 nonfiction book, Quiet, Susan Cain writes, â€Å"Westerners value boldness and verbal skill [†¦], while Asians prize quiet, humility, and sensitivity† (Cain 189), the same cultural differences that Maxine’s mother recognizes in The Woman Warrior. America prefers â€Å"verbal† communication, whereas China places more value on silence. In particular, American residents who straddle both Chinese and American cultures must face these two conflicting ideals. Maxine simultaneously lives in these two opposing cultures. Stemming from her Chinese upbringing, Maxine’s silence makes it hard for her to accept herself in the Western world. While reminiscing about her school life, she thinks, â€Å"It was when I found out I had to talk that school became a misery, that silence became a misery† (Kingston 166). The word â€Å"misery† generally indicates sadness or distress; furthermore, misery commonly causes debilitating symptoms—a person in a state of misery tends to be unable to function appropriately. Thus, when Maxine refers to silence becoming a â€Å"misery,† she means that it upsets her and that it prevents her from being fully present. When her school forces her to talk, Maxine becomes uncomfortable with her own silence. Consequently, herShow MoreRelatedThe Woman Warrior By Maxine Hong Kingston Essay1557 Words   |  7 PagesHathman 1 Rachele Hathman Professor Richard Potter ENC 1939 16 November 2016 The Woman Warrior Language is a system of communication used by humans either written or spoken to communicate our thoughts and feelings. Our thoughts and feelings we want to communicate to our loved ones, to our friends, to people we work with or go to school with and even to strangers. Maxine Hong Kingston in her memoir The Woman Warrior explores language and the use of language to express what Kingston finds as severalRead MoreThe Woman Warrior: A Tale of Identity1972 Words   |  8 PagesThe Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston is a collection of memoirs, a blend of Kingston’s autobiography with Chinese folklore. The book is divided into five interconnected chapters: No Name Woman, White Tigers, Shaman, At the Western Palace, and A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe. In No Name Woman, three characters are present: Kingston, Kingston’s mother, and Kingston’s aunt. This section starts off with Kingston’s mother retelling the story of her aunt and herRead MoreAsian American Narratives Defined By The Intergenerational Model1120 Words   |  5 Pagesstyles and character interactions, Asian American novels, in particular Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Tao Lin’s Taipei, uphold this intergenerational model, to some extent, whereby a structured series of events effectively portray the personal ethnic difficulties many second generation Asian Americans face within the American context. Strictly following the intergenerational model, Kingston’s The Woman Warrior explicitly details all three steps of the model in resolving her Asian AmericanRead MoreLiterary Analysis of No Name Woman6151 Words   |  25 PagesA short literary analysis of Maxine Kingstons classic â€Å"No Name Woman† As part of the first generation of Chinese-Americans, Maxine Hong Kingston writes about her struggle to distinguish her cultural identity through an impartial analysis of her aunt’s denied existence.   In â€Å"No Name Woman,† a chapter in her written memoirs, Kingston analyzes the possible reasons behind her disavowed aunt’s dishonorable pregnancy and her village’s subsequent raid upon her household.   And with a bold statement