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According to the survey, the origin of Chinese American literature should date back to the second half of 19th century. This is a period that the first large scale of Chinese immigrants arrived in America. However, that was just a kind of immigrant literature mainly based on the oral literature like ballads and stories. And for most scholars the first real Chinese American literature work is Mrs. Spring Fragrance which is written by Sui Sin Far in 1912.
The real upsurge in the development of Chinese American literature began in 1970s. It was pushed by immigrants law reform, the black civil rights movement, feminist movement and student movement. So in this period Chinese American writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, Amy Tan and Gish Jen paid much attention to the importance of cultural identity and their rights.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Maxine Hong Kingston as A Female Chinese American Writer
Maxine Hong Kingston is one of the most famous Chinese American writers. Her three master works The Woman Warrior （1976）, China Man（1980）and Tripmaster Monkey（1989）get a great success in literary circles. Her parents emigrated to the United States in 1930s and she was born and raised in America. The Chinese tradition, culture and history have a great influence on her so that her literature works often contain Chinese elements. But she was educated in America and surrounded by Americans. There’s no doubt that she was impacted by American mainstream culture and literature. As she is a female Chinese American, she also pays much attention to the status of females. So the cultural identity, racism and feminism become some of her major concerns in her works. Her writings are often based on memory and imagination.
2.2 Current Status about The Woman Warrior
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Childhood among Ghosts（1976）is Maxine Hong Kingston’s most successful work which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction in 1976. The publication of The Woman Warrior created a social stir immediately and the book was regarded as “An epoch-making masterpiece” by President Clinton. It was even highly praised as an original work of the revitalization of Chinese American literature. “It was written as a memoir, but reads like a combination of autobiography and fiction.” （Chang Yaoxin, 2008: 552）This work is like a biography based on a combine of mythology, history, tales and imagination.
The Woman Warrior is also the most controversial work among all Maxine Hong Kingston’s works due to its special way of Chinese culture representation. The peculiar writing techniques brought wide praises from readers but also caused some flames from literature critics like Frank Chin, Kathryn Fong and Benjamin Tong. Frank Chin regarded the book as a book which caters to Caucasians’ tastes. They criticized that Maxine Hong Kingston wasn’t on behalf of the Chinese Americans’ interests and distorted the real image of China in The Woman Warrior. But Maxine Hong Kingston emphasized that The Woman Warrior first is an American book.
The 1960s and the 1970s are the upsurge of the civil rights. The black civil rights movement, and feminist movements have forced the birth of Maxine Hong Kingston’ The Woman Warrior. This book expresses a strong protest to the patriarchy, hierarchy in China and racial discrimination in America through the description of a series of Chinese women.
3. Analysis of the Typical Female Images in The Woman Warriors源'自:优尔]'论-文'网"]www.youerw.com
3.1 No Name Woman—A Defender for Liberalism at the Expense of Death
The first chapter “No Name Woman” is a tragedy which has become a taboo in a family and was retold by the author’s mother.（Here the author is replaced by Maxine in the following passage.）
In 1920s, Maxine’s aunt was married to a young man by her family. And this marriage was never related to love but just one of ‘‘hurry-up weddings—to make sure that every young man who went ‘out the road’ would responsibly came home’’ （Kingston, 1976：3）. Later her husband left home and gave her endless loneliness and waiting instead of happiness. She got pregnant with other man few years later. The villagers attacked aunt and insulted her before baby birth. At that night, aunt gave birth to a baby outside and she drowned her little baby and herself in the family well. However, the whole family never showed any sympathies to her and never had a word about her. That makes Maxine’s aunt become “no name women”.