"The Woman Warrior"

From "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston

I chose to write about 3 quotes from the excerpt which describes what life was like for Maxine while she was living in China.

"You get no warning that you shouldn't wear a white ribbon in your hair until they hit you and give you the sideways glare for the rest of the day. They hit you if you wave brooms around or drop chopsticks or drum them... You figure out what you got hit for and don't do it again if you figured correctly."  (Kingston, 456)

"I had vampire nightmares, every night the fangs grew longer, and my angel wings turned pointed and black. I hunted humans down in the long woods and shadowed them with my blackness. Tears dripped from my eyes, but blood dripped from my fangs, blood of the people I was supposed to love." (Kingston, 457)

"And I know about college. What makes you think you're the first one to think about college? I was a doctor. I went to medical school. I don't see why you have to be a mathematician. I don't see why you can't be a doctor like me." (Kingston, 466)

The first quote describes what life was like for women. She describes how women were hit when they did something that society deemed as wrong. Women were hit for things like wearing white ribbon in their hair and dropping chopsticks, but they were not told why they were being abused. It was up to the women to guess what they have done wrong so that they could change it.

The second quote explains a nightmare that Maxine used to have. Dreams and nightmares are a good look into one's subconscious mind. She compares herself to a vampire, who feeds off of the people that she is supposed to love. Her subconscious is telling her that she is "hurting" the people that she is supposed to love.

The third quote describes Maxine's relationship with her mother and their views on higher education. Her mother asks her why anybody would want to marry her and why she wants to go to college. While her mother doesn't understand why Maxine would want to go to college, Maxine views college as a type of freedom. 

Word Count: 382