Thursday, April 5, 2012

Tranlations and Transitions

Megan Rippey

                As I was considering the end of The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston during our class discussion, I was really struck by the notion of translation and the implications that transnationalism places upon American immigrants.  In the section that we analyzed in class about “’Ho Chi Kuei’” and “’Hao Chi Kuei’” (204), the narrator struggles with her inability to translate a common phrase from her Chinese culture.  It is notable that this comes up in the final chapter in the narrator’s adulthood, because it is when she struggles most to reconcile parts of her Chinese culture as she assimilates more into American culture.  Her desire to translates exemplifies a failed attempt to connect with her past only further magnifies the isolation from personal history that has occurred in the narrator’s disconnect with her Chinese identity.  She also displays the manner in which she has begun to come to terms with a newly forged identity.
                Similarly this ties into the notion of memoir that we discussed at the beginning of class.  Because this section is told in the first person narrative voice, which makes the feelings of disconnect more real to the reader.  Although the entire book is about characters and their feelings of distance and longing of their lives in China, this chapter and specifically this section really struck a chord.  The authority of the narrator’s voice as she explains the two entirely different meanings that the phrase could signify shapes her pasts in vastly different ways.
                While the negotiation of identities weaves each chapter seamlessly together, it is not until the final lines that we learn that the narrator finally is beginning to come to terms with her identity as a Chinese-American.  The search for the ideal American feminine depiction appears to be out of her head, and she is ready to join a group of women who have had shared in the struggles that she has endured through her socialization as a Chinese immigrant to America.  She is no longer a barbarian, who stands alone, aggressive, defensive.  She is now a songstress.  She is a songstress who is able to partake in a communicative chant of the victories of survival in the tumultuous life of a female immigrant.

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