Recently, we read the first chapter of The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston. Our assignment was to pick two quotes from the reading and explain them.
1. "Adultery is extravagance. Could people who hatch their own chicks and eat the embryos and the head for delicacies and boil their feet in vinegar for party food, leaving only the gravel, eating even the gizzard lining-could such people engender a prodigal aunt? (Kingston, 6)"
Maxine is trying to explain to us that how can a family that doesn't waste anything produce a daughter that goes out and wastes her life by cheating on her husband? This family uses every part of the chicken, but a daughter goes out and wastes her life. It was a waste to have a child that ended up killing herself.
2. "Uncles, cousins, nephews, brothers would have looked, too, had they been home between journeys . Perhaps they had already been restraining their curiosity, and they left, fearful that their glances, like a field of nesting birds, might be startled and caught (Kingston, 10)."
Here, Maxine says that maybe, it wasn't her aunt's fault that someone could have raped her. She is so beautiful, that even family members would check her out. The reason why they left for America is because they didn't want anyone to see them staring at their family member. It would have been frowned upon if they did stare at a family member.
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I like the first quote that you chose. I like how Maxine compares her aunt to a chicken. A counterpart to how the Chinese use a chicken, is America. In America people donʻt use every part of the chicken and also some Americans waste their lives away. The American culture is very different from the Chinese culture.
I also like how Maxine comes up with the theory that she was raped and that she was so beautiful that even her own family members checked her out. I doubt that this theory of Maxine is correct because they would have been shamed by their family for looking at their own sister, daughter, or cousin. This shows us also that the Chinese culture isnʻt that embeded into Maxine because a Chinese woman wouldnʻt come up with this theory.
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