The Woman Warrior and Loving in the War Years

In their books “The Woman Warrior” and “Loving in the War Years,” Maxine Hong Kingston and Cherrie Moraga write about the persistence of social oppression. They also describe the dynamics of race, sexuality, and gender in everyday experience. Through reading these books I have picked up on several significant events which illustrate these issues. The correlation between these two authors is the importance placed upon these issues that seem to be underlying themes in both books.

The persistence of social oppression is an obvious theme in Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior”. One can pickup on this from the first chapter quite easily. Through Kingston’s recount of the story her mother told her about her father’s sister we can see how cruelly women could be treated in China at that time. In this “talk-story” as her mother calls it, we learn that Kingston had an aunt who never left China. This aunt was shunned by her village and family for becoming pregnant by a man who was not her husband. The details surrounding this man and their relationship are shady and uncertain, however the villagers decide to ransack her home, slaughtering the family's livestock and destroying their crop.

The relationship with this story and the theme of social oppression comes later in the chapter. We learn that after her home was destroyed, made outcast by her family, Kingston’s aunt crawls into the barn and gives birth to the child. She feeds the child and later carries it to the well with her. “It was probably a girl; there is some hope of forgiveness for boys.” (The Woman Warrior. Pg 15)

This sentence shows how women face such oppression and hardships in China during this period. Kingston explains that if the child was a boy, perhaps her aunt could simply kill herself and let the child live and possibly the child would outgrow its mother’s shame, and have a good life. However since the child was a girl, Kingston’s aunt was convinced the child would have no such luck and thus took it with her into the well.

The story of Fa Mu Lan is very important in learning about the woman's place in society as depicted by Kingston. This “talk-story” tells us of a woman who goes to train with a wise couple at the peak of a mountain. She is training to become a Woman Warrior, one who will inevitably take her fathers place in battle. Fa Mu Lan stays with the couple for 15 years undergoing intensive martial arts training in mental and physical activities.

Upon finishing her training with the wise couple, Fa Mu Lan returns to her village to be greeted with praise and gifts from the village people. Upon seeing her family she is showered with glories “as if they were welcoming home a son” (The Woman Warrior. Pg 34). However before her parents will allow her to take her fathers place in the army, they force her to kneel before a shrine while her father uses a knife to carve a “list of grievances” into her back.

Fa Mu Lan’s father carving these words into his daughters back is a shocking and cruel inhumane act. The significance of this particular part of the story is to show us yet