Woman Warrior Night After Night Term Paper

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Her visions of her mother as some kind of monster-deliverer appear in Kingston's nightmares. She states on page 86, "My mother has given me pictures to dream -- nightmare babies that recur." The grotesque imagery of her mother delivering monsters corresponds also with her dreamlike memories of foods they ate when she was a child in China. The images converge in Kingston's head to provide the foundation for her self-image and her identity as a Chinese woman living as an immigrant in the United States. At the close of the "Shaman" chapter she comments about her mom's psychic legacy: "She sends me on my way, working always now and old, dreaming the dreams about shrinking babies," (109).

Kingston's memories and thoughts of her mother are partly created by her nightmares. The distinction between waking and dream life are not important for Kingston's psychological development or the creation of her self-image. Kingston was inherently afraid of her mom both for her being emotionally detached and from her profession.

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Kingston comments on the ways that parents influence an individual's psycho-social development: "Before we can leave our parents, they stuff our heads like the suitcases which they jam-pack with homemade underwear," (87). In this chapter, Kingston also remarks how her dreams offer insight into her identity as Chinese: "I push the deformed into my dreams, which are Chinese, the language of impossible stories," (87).

Throughout Woman Warrior, Kingston uses dream and fantasy to tell half her story. For Kingston, dreams and fantasies are equally as important as real-life narratives, which only provide a sliver of the truth and a partial rendering of a person's experiences. All persons spend a considerable number of hours in dreamtime and Kingston's approach to memoirs honors and respects this essential aspect of human existence. Dreams mirror and reflect our psychic impressions of daily life and they offer insight into our egos, alter-egos, hopes, and fears.

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