Reading the book authored by Kingston reveals that indeed the author experienced various stages of hardship while living in California. One of the hardships the author experienced was that of difficulty in communicating with other people both at her school settings and the external social environment. This difficulty in communication stems from a cultural practice in her native land where tongue mutilation was a common practice and her mother’s personal desire for her to learn multiple languages.
The author confesses that her subsequent experiences as she grew of age took a different trajectory from her mother’s original expectations since speaking even her native language became difficult. In the story, she states that she was often compelled to repeat her speech performance on a number of her daily social conversations as typified in her conversations with the taxi driver and the fear that ran through her spine when the phone rang (Kingston, 1989). Contextually, the mutilation of the author’s tongue brought her daily hardship considering that she had a strong desire to socialize freely like the rest of her peers, a desire that became unattainable due to her communication problem.
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Much of this hardship is manifested during her time in kindergarten where she was expected to speak English for the first time. The author acknowledges the struggle she had to go through during this phase of her life, arguing that saying even simple English words such as “hello” proved difficult (Kingston, 1989). With such difficulties in casual communication, her life in the kindergarten did not sail smoothly as that of other learners given the difficulties she had to go through in simple tasks such as asking questions at the checkout counter.
Even more concerning is the silence the author went through, especially the prolonged length of time the silence took. She states that her silence was the thickest-totaling the three years she was in kindergarten. She confesses that during her first year she spoke to no one, but spent much of her time enjoying the silence. To compensate for the silence, the author took up drawing, another decision which introduced further hardship into her life. According to Kingston (1989), her drawings attracted the attention of her teachers who eventually summoned her parents to school under the suspicion that they were aiding or encouraging criminal tendencies on the part of their child due to the misinterpretation of what the drawings meant, and the message the young artist was trying to portray to her imaginary audience.
There are certain obstacles the author is forced to negotiate in the process of fulfilling herself. One of such obstacles is that of disparities in the American and Chinese cultures. Regarding this, the author feels driven by the need to fit in the American society in spite of the culture shock and her continued strong attachment to her native Chinese culture. This development is evident in the scene where she drinks from a saucer as it is commonly done in China but otherwise frowned upon in the American culture (Kingston, 1989). A similar development appears during her conversation with the druggist where the conflicts between the two cultures arise as a major obstacle she has to negotiate in an attempt to fulfill herself (Kingston, 1989).
Reference
Kingston, M. H. (1989). The woman warrior: Memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts. New York, NY: Vintage International .
