Empowering Ghosts: Assertion of the Identity through the Embracement of Myths in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Abstract

In The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Maxine Hong Kingston intertwines various myths as well as ghost stories, rooted in her Chinese origins, with her own experience as a young woman living in Western culture. In the crossings between East and West, Kingston integrates a third culture as part of her identity. This paper aims to demonstrate how Kingston‘s embracement of her mother's ghost stories and Chinese tales plays a significant role in the assertion of her identity as a writer. Through the retelling of the stories told by her mother, such as the Weeping Ghost of her dead aunt with no name; the Sitting Ghost that her own mother defeated in Hong Kong; the avenging of the woman warrior Fa Mu Lan; and the song of the poetess Ts‘ai Yen, Kingston finds the necessary strength to assert a sense of identity as both a woman and a writer. It is precisely through these supernatural elements that she finds her own voice and asserts the power of her words, reconciling in the process her split self between two cultures.