Blog Post 4 Topic 4

In Maxine Hong Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior”, she portrays her own first-generation-immigrant experience as a child growing up in the United States in the 1940’s. The immigrant experience is certainly unique, but the mindset of people towards immigrants has definitely changed as time progressed.  Kingston depicts the struggle of language barrier that exists within immigrants through her writing. Although, the experience for those immigrating in to the United States today, will evidently be different from those that immigrated in the during Kingston time.

            Kingston predominantly portrays her own struggle as a child growing up in United States with the language barrier in her autobiography. Learning a new language is a challenge for most people, and since English is also not my first language, I can understand the difficulties that Kingston faces. “Speak up”, is what I would normally hear as Kingston also mentioned in her story. The level of confidence required to speak a completely new language and overcoming the fear of mispronouncing words is tremendous. After running the sentences repeatedly over and over in your own head, and being asked to speak it the second time only blows out the candle that was starting to catch fire. Kingston possibly felt this way and is potentially why she made a slow progress breaking out of her silence. Kingston even illustrates her struggle to understand the English language as an immigrant through the character “I”. She mentions that the Chinese “I” (我) having seven strokes and wears a hat. Thus, she cannot comprehend the simplicity in the “I” within the English language compared to the “I” in Chinese. Kingston also exemplifies the difficulty of expressing her speech in English through her sentence structure, for example, “Tatagimmesomecandy,” portraying her struggle in language as an immigrant.

            The immigrant experience Kingston had during her childhood was certainly more difficult compared to those immigrating nowadays considering the ongoing globalization. People are much more accepting of immigrants today compared to Kingston’s time. Historically, the United States was plagued with racist employment legislation, therefore Chinese immigrants did not receive as much opportunity and respect as they should have. Kingston’s father was an educated man with a degree but had to work a menial job due to racism. This would be completely different today as population of Asian-Americans are increasing and jobs are not given out to certain races but it considers skills and capabilities for the job. Although racism still exists, the mindset this generation is much more lenient and accepting, making the transition for those immigrating more welcoming. Without a doubt, I think that when cultures and people integrate it creates diversity which allows for society to thrive and improve as a whole.

            The experience that Kingston portrays in her story shows her hardships that resolves to a good ending. I would personally change the learning experience in this story and how Kingston chooses to portray herself. Overcoming the steep learning curve for a new language and the experience of being in a new country which is always fascinating, and I would choose to portray its optimism. In addition, I wouldn’t abuse the difference in race and nationality as much as Kingston has in her story, but rather embrace the fact that we are different and diverse, which would bring up the level of confidence in every immigrant.