The Past Doesn’t Always Stay in the Past

 

Kingston’s mother’s behavior and stories follow the “do as I say and not as I do” pattern that I have witnessed with my own parents. Kingston’s mother is an accomplished doctor, yet she constantly lives in the past, haunted by the “ghosts” of her life in China and subjecting her daughter to this same mental torture. She prevents her daughter from truly asserting herself, yet she herself is assertive, Brave Orchid is still stuck in the rigidity and culture of China, a country she left for a “better” life (more money), and cannot escape the life she left. She is living in the United States, the “Gold Mountain” (Kingston 3) that was supposed to bring her family more freedom, yet she remains shackled to the past and her life in her former country.

 

1 Brave Orchids past was bound to her just as the feet of Chinese women were bound

 

While reading Woman Warrior, I judged Brave Orchid harshly, but then I realized that in some ways we are all like her. Brave Orchid, whether scared of her life without her rules and regulations or just hard-hearted, cannot see a way past the way her life used to be. She has come to a new country for a new life, but this new life is clouded with the challenges she faced back in China. All of us tend to hold on to the past in some respect or another. It’s human nature. Whether is holding on to a relationship that has long since died or holding grudge for years after a person has wronged you, the past always seems to haunt us. But in order to truly live, we must let go and let the past be what it is – the past. However, we cannot forget the past entirely. The lessons we learn and the challenges we overcome are all part of who we are. They shape us into better people, stronger and more resilient. The past should not haunt us but be a recognized part of who we are. Unfortunately, Brave Orchid does not just allow her struggles and memories to be a part of who she is, but rather, she allows them to consume her completely and consequently destroys her relationship with her daughter.

 

2 Because of her impression of her "ghosts" on Kingston, Brave Orchid was never able to have a relationship with her daughter

 

Brave Orchid is offered as a contrast to her own daughter. Kingston is subjected to these stories her entire life, and, even though they are harshly and, at times, inhumanly told, they are her lessons and challenges she must overcome. The memory of her ”aunt haunts [her]” (Kingston 16), as do the ghosts of the other women in her family her mother uses as examples of who not to be like. They cause her relationship with her mother to be one of hatred and fear, as inside of her grew a “list of over two hundred things that [she] needed to tell [her] mother so that [Brave Orchid] would know the true things about [her]” (Kingston 197). These stories and the ghosts they create are Kingston’s past, and they shape her into the woman warrior that she eventually becomes. Kingston is a warrior not only in her ability to shed the dictation of society, but in her ability to do what her mother could not – let the past be in the past. Kingston allows her past to only be a part of her, and she is able to become an admirable woman warrior. She is now no longer pushed around by racist bosses, but rather is a woman who is able to express her own opinions and desires. At the end of the book, Kingston and Brave Orchid make peace with each other and peace with the past.

 

3 Kingston overcomes her past and her "ghosts" to become a woman warrior