Blog 8

First edition cover for The Woman Warrior, 1976.

Azade Seyhan (2001) defines "ethnic literature" as the "linguistic and cultural heritage that is articulated via actions of the individual and collective memory of the multicultural, the deterritorialized subject" in Writing Outside the Nation (Seyhan, 2001, p.12). She goes on to say that the main drivers of second- and third-generation ethnic subjects' existence are their hybridity and multilingual (Seyhan. 2001, p.6). Chinese-Americanness is what makes The Woman Warrior (1976) up as a whole, including the narrative voice, language, and cultural allusions. The Woman Warrior (1976), a semi-autobiographical book, features Kingston as the main character and shares many similarities with Kingston's life. The book is divided into five sections, each of which focuses on an aspect of Kingston's

"No Name Woman," the first segment, tells the tale of Kingston's aunt, who is shunned by her community after getting pregnant outside of marriage. The mother of Kingston and her voyage to America are the subject of the second section, "White Tigers." Kingston examines the place of women in Chinese society and how they are frequently seen as being weak in the third section, "Shaman." In the fourth section, "At Sea," Kingston is a young adult who is trying to balance her Chinese and American identities while trying to find her place in America. The story's narrator, who is trying to make sense of a deterritorialized culture of "a forgotten history" in a second home, illustrates the theme of growing up with two nationalities and two languages.

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