Free Essays - Response to Kingstons Woman Warrior :: Maxine Hong Kingston Woman Warrior Essays

A Response to Kingstons Woman Warrior   Sometimes, I must admit, I look at my mother and call into question where she is coming from, what in the world she is thinking, and why does she act the way she does.  I can not possibly be manage her because, as I enunciate myself, if I catch on to her weird behavior now, I will be able to catch it in myself before it is too late.  The funny social function is that I am sure that she did and still does the same thing in regards to her own mother.  What is even worse is that I see my mother becoming like her own mother, despite my mothers hopes that she is not like my grandmother.  Does this, then, mean that I am going to be like my mother or that I am already like her?  Why does this thought frighten me?     Kingston herself seems to be struggling with these questions as she writes The Woman Warrior.  In the chapter At the Western Palace she is writing generally from her mothers perspective an d, through this process, perhaps learning more almost the way in which she behaved as a child towards her mother.  Her mother frequently tries to compliment her children yet all that they do is run away, leave to go to another room.  It is as if they can not be bothered by their own mothers words, the pride that she has for them.  or else of reveling in her words and love, they want to hide, to protect themselves from her words, from having to deal with her.     What must it have been like for Kingston to have to write this about herself, to realize the ways in which her words and actions have distanced herself from her mother?  But then Kingstons own words continue to make the mother seem like the outsider, the one who was different from everyone else, make her mother appear again as the one who is the ghost.  The children, even her own husband, merely appeared to humor her, making no effort to want to learn about the Chinese culture and therefo re not caring to know about their own mother.  How often have we done the same with our own mothers, not bothering to jaw to her, merely humoring her because we can not be bothered to make the time to really care about what she wants?