Warriors, Wives and Writers- Fantasy or Reality? : Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior

Abstract

This paper engages in a critical discussion of one of the most basic concems underlying contemporary literary feminism: what does it mean to “speak as" and “for" women? The paper reviews some of the conflicting theories of white and non-white literary feminista on the politics of representation, while analyzing Maxine Hong Kingston's memoir The Woman Warrior. It argues that Kingston’s memoir is a text with a feminist agenda, which could be located in the text’s strategies of narrativization. Finally the paper demonstrates how The Woman Warrior calis for a redefinition of the genre of minority literatura, while urging for a rethinking of western literary practicos.