Affected Identity in Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

The stage of the "identity crisis" has increasingly become a part of mainstream psychology in understanding the young adult; formulating an identity is essential to leading a satisfactory life. Within “Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe”, the last chapters of Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston is attempting to define herself, and part of this process includes re-examining cultural conflicts which exist for her as a Chinese girl living in America. In “Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives”, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, renowned theorists of feminist theory, write about autobiography and the affected self. Wendy Simonds discusses the irony of the self due to the effects of the media (mainly, self-help literature) in her essay, “All Consuming Selves: Self-Help Literature and Women’s Identities.” Focusing on the tension between American and Chinese ideals on silence, Maxine Hong Kingston exercises agency within Woman Warrior despite her identity being socially affected by cultural norms. 

Smith and Watson help us to realize Kingston’s motivation to focus on silence by discussing the relation between embodiment and culture. Smith and Watson write: 

“Cultural discourses determine which aspects of bodies become meaningful—what parts of the body are “there” for people to see. They determine when the body becomes visible, how it becomes visible, and what that visibility means.” (Smith and Watson, 254)