Obviously, I'm a multidimensional person. Not only do I write creative nonfiction about my life, but I'm also an academic. The following is a reflection I wrote today regarding Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. As a collection of essays, it's a really fantastic example of the non-Western circular literary philosophy and I recommend it whole-heartedly.
Hong Kingston's narrative has been escribed as "a dream--of the 'female avenger.'" In what ways does this narrative blur distinctions of reality? And what result does it effect with regard to the reader, form beginning to end?
My feelings on the distinctions of reality are as follows: I think Maxine (yes, we're on a first-name basis) takes many liberties in regards to the flexibility of her genre. The essay "White Tigers" is clearly fantastical and more than a little imaginative. In this way, Maxine bends the limitations of the nonfiction memoir genre. She incorporates almost certainly fictional responses with her honest and realistic experiences. But really, who's to say she can't, or shouldn't, or oughtn't? I feel like Max can do whatever she wants with her narrative; the issues only arise when we as the literary community try to pin her down in one genre.
The result of her genre-bending on the reader is, in a word, perplexing (or perplexification). We, who are trained analytically, cannot grapple with the concept of a fluid genre, of subject-to-change classification. Instead we sit back and critique Max for not playing by the rules. We may grow increasingly agitated, as we continue through the collection, by her wishy-washy-ness. "Just choose fiction or non-fiction, already, Max. You can't do both in the same essay!" This attitudinal response is appropriate and understandable, but I do not share it.
I read with anticipation; eager to discover what "hard and fast" rule Max would break next. What? I wondered She critiques both Chinese and American cultures? She didn't choose one to defend? This is awesome!
The subtitle would suggest that these reflections are her girlhood-- her child-self processing through her heritage. Of course, there are imaginative elements, then, she's just a girl here.
My classmate posed the question "Who is Maxine Hong Kingston: the warrior woman or the girl among ghosts?" and another classmate offered that this unanswered question is a strength, not a weakness of the book. My thoughts are that The book requires no answer, no resolution. It is an exploration of a girlhood, and what child answers those deep questions for themselves?
No comments:
Post a Comment