Suzanne Juhasz (Essay Date 1985)

SOURCE: Juhasz, Suzanne. "Narrative Technique & Female Identity." In Contemporary American Women Writers: Narrative Strategies, edited by Catherine Rainwater and William J. Scheik, pp. 173-89. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985.

In the following essay, Juhasz maintains that The Woman Warrior and China Men "compose a woman's autobiography, describing a self formed at the source by gender experience."

Maxine Hong Kingston's two-volume autobiography, The Woman Warrior and China Men, embodies the search for identity in the narrative act. The first text places the daughter in relation to her mother, the second places her in relation to her father; they demonstrate how finding each parent is a part of finding oneself. For Kingston, finding her mother and father is to name them, to tell their stories. Language is the means with which she arrives at identity, first at home, and then in the world. But...