What are little girls made of? "Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of." Sugar and Spice--is that the recipe for ALL little girls? It’s certainly what the little American girl grows up learning. But what about the little Chinese girl, who grows up learning quite a different lesson? She learns "there is no profit in raising girls" and "better to raise geese than girls" (Kingston 9). Maxine Hong Kingston’s autobiographical The Woman Warrior bursts at the seams with examples of the cruel treatment of females in and among the Chinese culture. Simply being born embarks the Chinese female on a ceaseless cycle of inferior treatment from society. The Chinese society begins the belittling of females soon after their birth, selling even the youngest of girls as slaves in the street markets. Continuing on into the later stages of life, still trapped in the characterization of slaves, Chinese women serve as subordinates to their husbands. Although Kingston does not literally and physically experience the chains of slavery that come with being a Chinese woman because she was born, and lives, in America, her Chinese heritage still enslaves her. Ironically, being born and raised in America, the only element of Kingston that keeps her from physically undergoing this inferior treatment, plays a major part in establishing and sustaining her enslavement. Instead of being caught in the customs of just the Chinese culture, Kingston is trapped between two cultures: that of the Chinese and that of the American. As a result of the enslavement caused by these two cultures, the need for a process of self-exploration arises; therefore Kingston must first evaluate and analyze her self, then proceed to define who she is. Through The Woman Warrior Kingston narrates this process of self-discovery, defining what it means to be a Chinese-American, "born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents" (Sato 194).
    A look at nothing more than mere language provides a more than adequate illustration of the problems caused in having two cultural backgrounds. The Chinese word for the female "I" means slave, so even the women, in addition to the rest of society, break themselves with their own tongues. Each time Kingston, as a Chinese woman, refers to herself using the word "I," she belittles herself. On the other hand, in the language of American society there is no distinction between the male and female "I." The American "I" stands alone, strong and independent. As a woman of American society, when Kingston uses the word "I" she does not lower her self but, just the opposite, empowers her self. Language is a form of identity; and the languages of Kingston’s two cultural heritages alone create an identity crisis for Kingston. Is Kingston supposed to refer to herself as "I, the slave" or "I, the independent?" Trapped between two not only different but opposing views, Kingston must choose from the two and construct her own identity.
    Kingston uses the characters in The Woman Warrior, as tools in the construction of her identity as Chinese-American, with each narrative contributing its own part. In her article "Ghosts as Chinese American Constructs in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior," Gayle K. Fujita Sato states "the narratives of No Name Woman, Fa Mulan, Brave Orchid, Moon Orchid and Ts’ai Yen not only present five versions of female development but also express a concentric movement from imagined...toward actual experience" (198-9). Kingston begins in an unnamed Chinese village at the home of No Name Woman with her mother’s fictional talk-story, but ends her journey at her own home in Stockton, California with the reality of actual experiences.
    The journey begins with the exploration of Kingston’s Chinese heritage through the story of No Name Woman who had been banished by society and disowned by her family. Kingston establishes her Chinese heritage by expressing a kinship with No Name Woman, claiming her aunt as her "forerunner" (Kingston 9), and thereby giving recognition to her Chinese heritage through family ties. "As a Chinese-American daughter seeking and evaluating family ties, Kingston...feels kinship with this unacknowledged kin" because she herself has experienced and understands the negation of identity as a result of being severed from family (Sato 196).
    Continuing on with Kingston’s journey, the introduction of Fa Mulan also represents Kingston’s Chinese heritage. This ancient Chinese legend of a woman warrior who fights in the disguise of a man in order to redeem the respect of her family and village connects Kingston to the Chinese culture. Through the narratives of both No Name Woman and Fa Mulan, Kingston figuratively places herself within the Chinese culture, but because she is not actually a part of these two narratives, Kingston can step back and criticize her culture while still maintaining her connection to it.
    After critically analyzing the Chinese culture, Kingston, in her journey towards finding the self, moves away from her Chinese heritage. Kingston, apart from her own experiences in America, explores her American heritage through the narrative of her mother, Brave Orchid. Even though she is constantly trying to de-Americanize Kingston by forcing the customs of the Chinese culture upon her daughter, Brave Orchid ironically represents Kingston’s American heritage. By taking on the American traits of being outspoken and strong, dominating both her daughter Kingston and her sister Moon Orchid, Brave Orchid, despite her Chinese ethnicity, epitomizes the American culture. Where Brave Orchid forces the Chinese culture upon Kingston, she forces the American culture upon her sister, bringing Moon Orchid to America urging her to deny her Chinese ways of submissiveness, gain her voice, and confront her husband. Brave Orchid discards her own Chinese culture when she leaves China for America, and places her self in a superior position in society by becoming a doctor. She also breaks the mold of the Chinese woman, refusing to submit to the Chinese ideals of a woman through an exertion of power when she battles the ghost in the medical school, claiming, "When morning comes, only one of us will control this room, Ghost, and that one will be me" (Kingston 82). In spite of her attempts to make Kingston more Chinese, Brave Orchid, by example, manages to indulge her daughter in the American culture. In this sense, Kingston explores her American heritage through her mother and her American ways.
    After exploring both her Chinese cultural background, through the narratives of No Name Woman and Fa Mulan, and her American cultural background through the narratives of Brave Orchid and Moon Orchid, Kingston reaches the point of self-actualization in the last chapter through the narrative of Ts’ai Yen. Ts’ai Yen, caught and held captive by barbarians, was separated from her family and culture, just as Kingston is separated from hers. Resulting from her separation, Ts’ai Yen sings a song about China and her family. While the song is about the Chinese culture the barbarians can understand it and even think they hear barbarian phrases dispersed within the song. With this song Ts’ai Yen thus joins the two cultures and frees herself, psychologically, from the barbarians. Just as Ts’ai Yen is able to free herself by bridging two cultures with her song, Kingston frees herself from the enslavement of being caught between two cultures by defining herself as the product of one single culture of both the Chinese and the American: as a Chinese-American.
    Once Kingston finally defines herself as a Chinese-American, she completes the process of self-discovery by declaring herself as a Chinese-American. The now newly defined Chinese-American Kingston declares her self in and through various scenes in her autobiography. The scenes in which Kingston tells of the No Name Woman, challenges the little schoolgirl to find her voice, and confronts her mother by speaking out against her, illustrate three pivotal points to Kingston’s declaration of self as a Chinese-American. Through these scenes, by denying parts of her culture while keeping others, Kingston declares herself as of neither merely the Chinese nor merely the American culture, but instead, as of a synthesis of the two: the Chinese-American culture.
    In the telling of the No Name Woman, Kingston breathes life back into her aunt and her narrative by acknowledging the existence of both her aunt and her story. By re-telling, and revealing, the story of her aunt after specifically being told not to talk about No Name Woman, Kingston denies her Chinese culture with the refusal to be silent, and exerts herself as an American woman through her voice. However, at the same time, by telling of No Name Woman, Kingston gives recognition to her relationship with her aunt, which re-inserts No Name Woman back into the family history, and Kingston into the Chinese culture, thus establishing herself in her Chinese and her American heritage.
    Just as Kingston denies herself as a Chinese and establishes herself as an American through the exertion of a voice in the telling of No Name Woman’s story, it is also Kingston’s "American self that surfaces [through the assessment of a voice] in the washroom incident" (Begum 146) when she challenges the little Chinese girl to find her own voice: "If you don’t talk, you can’t have a personality...You’ve got to let people know you have a personality and a brain" (Kingston 180). Even though Kingston’s verbal and physical attacks upon the silent girl are unsuccessful in their goal "to make the girl speak, she succeeds in voicing herself with awesome power" (Begum 148). Suzanne Juhasz describes this movement from silence into speech as a movement from Chinese into American as well (175).
    Once again, in the form of a confrontation with her mother in the last chapter of The Woman Warrior, Kingston pronounces herself as American. Juhasz agrees that "in [this] fierce tirade against her mother she asserts her own American sense of independence" (183). Speaking out against her mother, Kingston "establish[es] herself as a talker...as American instead of Chinese" (Juhasz 183).
    Similar to the barbarians in the last chapter "reach[ing] again and again for a high note, yearning toward a high note" until at last they find and hold it (Kingston 208), Kingston herself, through her autobiography, is trying to find her own high note, her identity. The Woman Warrior is Kingston’s own narrative of a journey of the self, beginning with the imagined and ending with actual experience. Through this journey, which first begins with an exploration of her Chinese culture, then continues with an exploration of her American culture, and finally ends with a synthesis of the two, Kingston understands an defines exactly who she is. Not only does Kingston define her identity through her characters, but she also achieves the literal naming of her self by declaring herself, through example, as both American and Chinese. Khani Begum says it best when she states in her article, "Confirming the Place of ‘The Other’: Gender and Ethnic Identity in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior," that through The Woman Warrior Kingston identifies herself as "someone that society, both Chinese and American, has not yet defined accurately-a Chinese American whose experiences, while sometimes common with those of the Chinese [and] the Americans...differ greatly from [both] groups to make her a unique individual, a Chinese-American women" (153).
 
 

Begum, Khani. "Confirming the Place of ‘The Other’: Gender and Ethnic Identity
    in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior." New Perspectives on
    Women and Comedy. Ed. Regina Barreca. Philadelphia, PA: Gordon and Breach,
    1992. 143-154.

Juhasz, Suzanne. "Maxine Hong Kingston: Narrative Technique & Female Identity."
    Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies. Ed. Catherine
    Rainwater and William J. Scheick. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky,
    1985. 173-183.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts.
    New York: Vintage Books, 1976.

Sato, Gayle K. Fujita. "Ghosts as Chinese-American Constructs in Maxine Hong
    Kinston’s The Woman Warrior." Haunting the House of Fiction: Feminist
    Perspectives on Ghosts Stories by American Women. Ed. Lynette Carpenter and
    Wendy K. Kolmar. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1991. 193-213.
 
 

Begum, Khani. "Confirming the Place of ‘The Other’: Gender and Ethnic Identity in
    Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior." New Perspectives on Women
    and Comedy. Ed. Regina Barreca. Philadelphia, PA: Gordon and Breach, 1992.
    143-154.

Juhasz, Suzanne. "Maxine Hong Kingston: Narrative Technique & Female Identity."
    Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies. Ed. Catherine
    Rainwater and William J. Scheick. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky,
    1985. 173-183.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts.
    New York: Vintage Books, 1976.

Sato, Gayle K. Fujita. "Ghosts as Chinese-American Constructs in Maxine Hong
    Kinston’s The Woman Warrior." Haunting the House of Fiction: Feminist
    Perspectives on Ghosts Stories by American Women. Ed. Lynette Carpenter and
    Wendy K. Kolmar. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1991. 193-213.

Zhang, Ya-jie. "A Chinese Woman’s Response to Maxine Hong Kingston’s The
    Woman Warrior." Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: A Casebook. Ed.
    Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 17-21.