![]() Some of the talk-story's images that appear most extraordinary or fanciful, such as people and swords flying through the air, are based on Chinese popular culture and folklore Kingston saw these images depicted in Chinese movies while she was growing up in Stockton, California. She blends aspects of the Chinese legend of Fa Mu Lan with other myths stemming from Eastern philosophy and religion. The description of this woman's "combing her hair one morning" recalls how Kingston wanted to believe that No Name Woman "combed individuality into her bob." Also, the comment, "Perhaps women were once so dangerous that they had to have their feet bound," evokes the implied threat in Kingston's mother's telling her daughters that they should be glad that they were not forced to have their feet bound when they were seven years old, and foreshadows the later incident in "White Tigers" in which an evil baron's wives, once freed from the cruelly inhumane bandages used to wrap their feet, become fierce women warriors themselves.įor most of this chapter, Kingston relates the talk-story of Fa Mu Lan, the woman-warrior heroine about whom she learned as a child. Whereas the previous chapter begins with an entreaty for silence, "White Tigers" confidently proclaims that many successes are possible for women and, more specifically, for "Chinese girls." Prominent among the many talk-stories Kingston heard while growing up is one involving a woman warrior accomplished in martial arts, a story that Kingston narrates in the chapter's first paragraph as a segue between No Name Woman's history and the tale of Fa Mu Lan. ![]() Having reclaimed the discarded memory of her aunt by telling her story in "No Name Woman," Kingston continues her search for a Chinese-American identity in a more assertive and positive tone in "White Tigers," which relates the heroic struggle of Fa Mu Lan, one of the women warriors from whom the memoir gets its title.
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