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I think we can all relate to feeling suffocated at some point in our lives. Families tend to do that, especially when conflicting cultural values come into play. In fact, conflict with our families seems almost impossible because as time passes, values keep changing and the way we live our lives is totally different. When our parents were our age, it wasn’t unusual to get married and start settling down. It was a strange thing at that time for a man to stop working to stay home with children. Now, however, things have changed considerably. Many would agree that getting married this early is too early and that a dad can stay home with the kids instead of the mom. However, we tend to rebel against these constraints set in place by our families. My mom tends to want things for me sometimes that I really don’t agree with and instead of giving in I fight and argue. Having a voice for what you believe in is the most important thing when you’re becoming the person you will be for the rest of your life. Around my junior and senior year until now I am realizing that these years are going to define who I am and if I didn’t have a voice to say what I believe in, I would lose a lot of myself.
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This is where I think the main character in Woman Warrior might be getting some of her problems. She has outbursts (for example, against the little girl at her school or the time she yelled at her parents) because her family has promoted silence and submission all her life. Beginning at a young age, all the girls that she knew were silent and she “knew the silence had to do with being a Chinese girl” (Kingston 166). Thus, her very upbringing has forced her to struggle with wanting to defend and voice her thoughts, but she has had to fight against the values set before her by her parents.
While I respect my parents and what they’ve taught me all my life, I must say that I strongly believe in being your own person more. It’s been difficult with divorced parents because my mom and dad are extremely different. My dad is liberal, my mom conservative and I just naturally ended up being a more liberal person. So, it’s been hard having to reveal to my mom that I’m more like my dad in that way. However, I’ve found that it’s harder to sit and listen to her try to change my mind about things I know I’m set on.
However, because of the extreme lives that the main character’s parents led, I can understand her struggles in finding a voice to defend herself. She wants to respect her parents, but at the same time she has to deal with the frustration of slowly suffocating because of the cultural restraints her parents put on her. Growing up in America, she must balance the values that she learns outside of the house with the ones her parents, especially her mother, lay out for her. Like her aunt, she has to fight to keep "her spirit" from being "scattered all over the world" (Kingston 157). As she stated earlier, to be a Chinese woman is to be a slave or wife, but for the main character, she knows that there is much more to life and refuses to live in this way, stating “I won’t let you turn me into a slave or a wife” (Kingston 201). Unfortunately, these moments in which she stands up for herself are fleeting and not often. This is most likely because she has a great deal of inner conflict with weather she should be the good Chinese daughter and listen to her parents or do what she thinks is right in her heart. Thus, her obsession with speaking is probably due to this stress with her familial values. She has trouble seeing other girls who cannot speak because of her own struggles. But she also may be jealous of the little girl who doesn’t speak because this girl is such a perfect depiction of how many Chinese parents want their children to act. She has the support of her family and has no apparent fights because she is so submissive and quiet. So she proceeds to corner the girl and try to force her to “Talk! Talk! Talk!” (Kingston 180). She harasses the little girl because she can’t deal with the submissive nature in which she lives. Being so suffocated in her own life, she tries desperately to force others to follow her lead and fight for a voice.
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