Woman Warrior- The Obsolete Question of Genre

                Maxine Hong Kingston has received criticism for the factual liberties she took in recounting her life experiences in The Woman Warrior. Numerous scholars dismiss The Woman Warrior as a work of fiction clumsily disguised as a memoir. For instance, Benjamin Tong describes The Woman Warrior as “fiction passing for autobiography”, and Jeffery Chan accuses Kingston of “distributing an obvious fiction for fact”. While it is true that Woman Warrior violates traditional conventions of the memoir genre, this in no way undermines Kingston’s novel. Rather, the factual liberties serve to construct a narrative which contains greater meaning than a mere string of life experiences ever could.

                                Kingston herself admits that Woman Warrior does not follow the template of a traditional autobiography. By breaking conventional genre boundaries, Kingston empowers herself and tells greater truths about women’s toil and Chinese identity. Her fabricated narrative better intimates her struggles, experiences, and strengths than the David Copperfield model ever could. Critics who argue that The Woman Warrior should not be labeled as autobiography are erroneously reading the novel. The point is not exaggerations, but the reason behind them; constructed narratives serve to create an accurate depiction of Kingston’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Kingston recognizes that language has more power than facts to create an artful whole that embodies her coming-of-age struggle to find balance and voice.

                Myopic criticism of constructed narratives muddles Religious Studies academia as well. Last semester I studied the similarities amongst female Pentecostal preachers’ autobiographies from the early 1970s.  It was clear that, like Kingston, these women took liberties with their factual experiences for the sake of meaning. The Preachers’ life stories were patterned with the same narrative structure and ordering. All the women endured trying childhoods; all the women were ostracized adolescence; and all the women experienced an ineffable pull towards God. Critics cite these uncanny similarities when arguing that fabrications have no worth in Religious Studies. However, like Kingston’s exaggerations, these Calling-tales have significant meaning in that they empower the women’s words, and thus their value as vessels for God. It is pointless to question the veracity of the narratives. Instead, one may winnow out the True function of these religious narrative myths, and grasp the higher meaning which only crafted language can conjure.