It Translates Well

After reading the ending passage of Woman Warrior (206-209) several times, I found that it was much more informative than I first imagined. The line, "The beginning is hers, the ending is mine" (206) reflects the wishy washy narration that occurs throughout the novel but also something really interesting. I think the narrators saying that the story, Woman Warrior, is just as much her mother's as it is her's, if not more. She says, "Here is a story my mother told me, not when I was young, but recently, when I told her I also talk story" (206). Of course, this refers to the theatre story but also the novel in general. The narrator says the beginning of the story is her mother's and the first words of the novel are her mother's words. Likewise, the narrator says the ending is hers, so the novel ends with her story that begins with, "I like to think."

Next, Kingston includes a motif that I've noticed many times throughout the novel. She places this between parentheses - "which I would not have been able to understand because of my seventh-grade vocabulary, said my mother" (206). In all the other sections similar to this, Kingston offers a poor translation of a Chinese and American word, like the word for "eclipse" is "frog-swallowing-the-moon." This motif displays the struggle that exists when the Chinese and Americans attempt to integrate, as well as a Chinese mother (Brave Orchid) raising a Chinese-American daughter (the narrator). The struggle between mother and daughter is seen where Brave Orchid tells her that she calls the narrator ugly but she means the opposite. It doesn't translate well. The only area where something translates well is in the last few lines of the novel: "'Eighteen Stanzas for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,' a song that Chinese sing to their own instruments. It translated well." (209) The song is written for a non-Chinese instrument, the Barbarian Reed Pipe, but it still translates well. This just shows that the hybrid form can still be successful, can still translate well. And can even translate better than something normative. The Woman Warrior translated well.