Reimagined Communities

I apologize for this post’s lateness. I had no internet access as I traveled to watch Georgetown beat Villanova in Philadelphia this weekend.

After reading Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, it struck me that ghosts are perhaps the most fitting literary device for expressing the imagined communities that we discuss in class. Racially, Kingston employs “ghosts” when discussing African Americans and whites; more broadly, Kingston uses the term “ghost” to describe different professions and identities she notices, such as a passage on page 98 that lists various public service “ghosts”: social workers, public health nurses, meter readers. This concerted use of “ghost,” particularly when discussing elements of the public sphere, reminds the reader that these positions and their connotations not only exist beyond their literal existence (the “social worker” is not merely the man or woman at the office, but a general role) but rely upon shared, cultural imaginations as well. In Kingston’s use of the term, the ghosts do not merely haunt her or her mother as they negotiate America as an unwanted spirit; instead, they linger in their new community, shaping their outlook both on America and, especially in the narrator’s case, retroactively on her view of China. They may “have no memory and poor eyesight,” as she notes, but they remain a powerful force in shaping identity (185).

The presence of the racialized ghosts underscore issues of nationality and national belonging that are found elsewhere in the memoirs. When Brave Orchid informs Moon Orchid, “These aren’t the Americans. These are the overseas Chinese,” she telegraphs to her sister her own conception–and, unintentionally, outsiders’ conception– of Chinese immigrants as non-Americans (136). Last week, we discussed in class how, for a brief period in the 1960s, “white was white”: as Irish, Catholic John Kennedy assumed the presidency, ethnic divisions between people of white skin color lessened. This quotation from Brave Orchid reinforces broader conceptions that “American” is not necessarily those living in America– even if Chinese Americans cry “Mama” or if they play baseball at recess (117, 173).

Besides– judging by Kingston’s narration, there is little difference between Chinese and American culture. As a memoirist, Kingston uses literary technique to play with actual events and to accentuate certain emotions and to neglect certain others. There is no need for “balance” or “the other hand”: whatever she chooses to remember, she is free to record in whatever language she chooses. Nevertheless, her critique of Chinese culture on page 185 would hold just as true if “American” were substituted for Chinese. “I don’t see how they (the Chinese) kept up a continuous culture for five thousand years. Maybe they didn’t ; maybe everyone makes it up as they go along. If we had to depend on being told, we’d have no religion, no babies, no menstruation (sex, of course, unspeakable), no death.” Kingston’s own experience leads her to target Chinese culture for its “avoided gods”, yet America’s cultural taboos align surprisingly well with the ones listed. A Puritanical avoidance of sexual topics; an cultural emphasis on delaying death, rather than celebrating life; religions that reinvent themselves generationally (or semi-generationally): Americans tend to avoid talking about certain topics, as well, eschewing tradition for “ingenuity”.

Kingston should at least see that Americans love to take Professor McKeown’s advice: we make it up all the time. Perhaps, then, Americans only get away with it because American culture–and, important to Kingston, language– holds sway over other cultures and languages. So long as other, non-American people need to translate their concepts and ideas into precise terms in another language and location, Americans will seem “sane” (186).

At first glance of the title, I thought that this book was going to be about the narrator. But as I read deeper into it, I found that the woman warrior is instead referring to Brave Orchid, the narrator’s mother. There is, however, a cultural hegemony behind this image of woman warrior. This hegemony is constructed with the help of superstition, language, unfamiliarity, and exclusiveness. Put it in the language of our class, I dare say that this hegemony is imagined. As I read through this book, I was bothered by the descriptions of the author. A Chinese immigrant myself, I kept yelling at the book, “No, things are not like that!” But perhaps back in that time period, in the city of San Francisco, with a little bit of exaggerations, this hegemony was indeed possible.
I was quite confused by the ghost talks and woman warrior stories at the beginning, until the middle of the book did I remember that Chinese people referred (they still do) to all white and black foreigners as “ghosts”. In fact, Japanese also fell into this “ghost” category. Call it a scare tactic, trying to separate “us” from “them”. The book is a progressionof this construction of hegemony, until at the end the narrator breaks away from it.
There is always a tendency for immigrants to use their cultural values to measure the society around them. This passes onto the first American generation who were “protected” under these values. Especially in cities with a high concentration of Chinese immigrants, such as San Francisco, second generation Chinese could be compared to people residing on the Midway Island. They have certain knowledge of the Chinese language and history, but not to the extant that they could understand their parents’ action. They also understand quite a bit of English, but were forever withdrawn from the “ghosts”. But this presence of “ghosts” constantly makes them feel uncomfortable, at the beginning afraid, and then came the recognition that these “ghosts” are indeed humans. They feel embarrassed for being Chinese, but also humiliated for being American. It comes down to a quote in pg 5, “Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.”
This “invisible world” brings me back to the point I made earlier, that this hegemony is indeed imagined. One of the things about this book that bothered me the most, as all other books or movies about China, is the stereotype. I feel that Kingston constantly exaggerated her mother’s words and stories, or twisted the Chinese words to present the Chinese cultures as backward, rural, and unscientific. Kingston either intentionally cut out the core of the Chinese values, or she never had a solid grasp of them. This leaves us readers with an impression that Chinese people are loud, awkward, and superstitious. But as someone from China, who know about Chinese cultures and histories, someone who has lived in modern China, I had the urge to scream, “She’s exaggerating, things aren’t like this at all!” Of course, I could identify a little with her struggle to break away from this hegemony. But I cannot imagine all Chinese immigrants as close-minded, opinionated as Brave Orchid.
It bothers me to read these descriptions about Chinese people in America. At least from my personal background, and from what I see in my own family, the hegemony is never as strong and the barrier between the two cultures is quite transparent. There is confusion, no doubt, but I have yet to find a Brave Orchid in reality.