Women's Literature from 1960 to the Present: Women Authors of Color

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WOMEN'S LITERATURE FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT: WOMEN AUTHORS OF COLOR

ELLIOTT BUTLER-EVANS (ESSAY DATE 1989)

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

ON THE SUBJECT OF…

GLORIA NAYLOR (1950-)

Known for her lyrical prose and her skillful infusion of the mythical and magical in her novels, Naylor realistically portrays the varied lives of African Americans, particularly her examinations of the dual pressures of being a minority and a woman in a Caucasian, male-oriented society. Naylor's parents were sharecroppers in Robinson, Mississippi who moved to New York City one month before Naylor was born on January 25, 1950. Naylor attended Andrew Jackson High School in Queens, New York. Upon graduation she became a Jehovah's Witness missionary for seven years, and later returned to New York in 1975 to pursue a degree in nursing at Medgar Evers College. When Naylor recognized her strong interest in literature, she transferred to Brooklyn College to study English. While studying at Brooklyn College, Naylor published her first short story, "A Life on Beekman Place," in Essence. She later expanded the story into her first novel, The Women of Brewster Place (1982), which won the American Book Award for best new novel in 1983. She received her B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1981 and her M.A. in African-American studies from Yale in 1983, the same year she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. One of the recurring themes explored in Naylor's work is the special bond that can exist between women, whether out of common experience or of shared history. In The Women of Brewster Place, Naylor chronicles the aspirations and disappointments of seven female residents of Brewster Place, a dilapidated ghetto housing project. Naylor devotes individual chapters to the lives of each of her characters, detailing the circumstances that brought the women to the neighborhood, their relationships with each other, and the devastating events that heighten the difficulty of leaving Brewster Place. As the women cope with living in a racially polarized and sexist society, they encounter abuse and indifference from their fathers, husbands, lovers, and children, and alleviate their suffering through female solidarity and nurturing.

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

ESTHER MIKYUNG GHYMN (ESSAY DATE 1995)

SOURCE: Ghymn, Esther Mikyung. Introduction to Images of Asian American Women by Asian American Women Writers, pp. 1-10. New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, 1995.
In the following introduction to her book about Asian American women authors, Ghymn reviews the history of Asian American women's writing in English, touching on issues of race and gender as they are addressed in the works of such authors as Mitsuye Yamada, Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, and Hisaye Yamamoto.

The purpose of this study is to examine the images of Asian American women as presented by twelve prominent Asian American women writers. Almost all the well-known Asian American women writers are from the West, and they have recreated their own cultural roots in their images of Asian American women, images which now form a crucial part of Asian American literature. This study is much needed, for, as Robyn R. Warhol points out, "If women have traditionally occupied the margins, though, women of color have been doubly marginalized" (Warhol and Herndl, p. 687). Only through studies such as this one will this history of neglect be reversed.

The images of Asian American women offered by Asian American women writers can be approached in a variety of ways. In fact, more and more voices have joined the traditional critical chorus with such new strains and stresses as de-construction, psychoanalysis, feminism, narratology, and dialogism, so much so that one wonders if we all are still hearing the same notes. As Wayne Booth points out in his Critical Understanding, "We can hope that new modes will be invented, but nothing is more self-destructive than the current fashion of cheering each new rocket as if it had finally given us all the light we need- and then sighing when it quickly fizzles out. All new modes will simply enter the destructive logomachy that we all deplore, unless we learn to meet them with the arts of recovery and renovation that can meanwhile be profitably applied to the modes we already have" (Booth, Critical Understanding, p. 40). To use a different metaphor, new theories dressed in newly invented terminology are all too often like firecrackers that explode but fall into darkness after a few bright moments. My own approach will be more traditional, as I inquire into the structural and cultural meanings implicit in literary images of Asian American women.

Asian American women have been portrayed as stereotypes in American literature for a long time. Elaine Kim of the University of California, Berkeley, and Frank Chin, playwright and critic, believe that this is due to racial and ethnic prejudice. Kim argues that "stereotypes of racial minorities are a record of prejudices; they are part of an attempt to justify various attitudes and practices. The function of stereotypes of Asians in Anglo-American literature has been to provide literary rituals through which myths of white racial supremacy might be continually reaffirmed, to the everlasting detriment of the Asian" (Kim, Asian American Literature p. 21). Likewise, Chin states, "The ideal racial stereotype is a low-maintenance engine of white supremacy whose efficiency increases with age, as it becomes authenticated and historically verified" (Chin, Aiiieeeee, p. xxvii). I do not agree that the sole cause of stereotyping is racial prejudice, however, as we all know that stereotypes are not exclusively assigned to people with different racial backgrounds. Stereotypes have always existed in literature, as in the heroes and heroines of medieval romances, the stock characters of morality tales, and even some of Dickens' characters. Stereotypes are literary tools. As Kim and Chin suggest, however, the stereotype of the Asian in Anglo-American literature is particularly troubling.

In an effort to fight their unappealing image, Asian American women have banded together to publish anthologies of their own writings. The Forbidden Stitch (edited by Shirley Geoklin Lim), Making Waves (edited by Asian Women United of California), Home to Stay (edited by Sylvia Watanabe and Carol Bruchac), and This Bridge Called My Back (edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa) have been important vehicles for female Asian Americans to express themselves, following in the footsteps of other minority women such as black women writers who have rejected their traditional images. In the introduction to these anthologies the editor usually states something to this effect: "Contrary to the erroneous stereotype that Asian American women are passive and submissive, this anthology shows that we are not afraid to rock the boat. Making waves. This is what Asian American women have done and will continue to do" (Watanabe and Bruchac, p. xi). The new voices in these anthologies have outlined strikingly new images of Asian American

women. These images are a result of how Asian American women define themselves. Asian male writers have different perceptions. For example, Frank Chin comments on "faking" by Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. The new images presented by Asian American women are not realistic enough to satisfy the male writers. Indeed, if Asian American women writers are dominant and powerful, where does this leave Asian American men? However, literature is not sociology, and the self-images presented by Asian American women need to be understood in their literary contexts.

For the Asian American woman, it has been difficult to separate issues of race and gender. According to Mitsuye Yamada, a second generation poet, "The two are not at war with one another; we shouldn't have to sign a 'loyalty oath' favoring one over the other. However, women of color are often made to feel that we must make a choice between the two" (Yamada, p. 73). In fact, issues of race and gender are both obstacles that Asian American writers have to overcome. As Amy Ling recently notes, "For women of Chinese ancestry … writing is not only an act of self-assertion but an act of defiance against the weight of historical and societal injunctions" (Ling, Between Worlds p. 1). Indeed, discrimination against Asian women has existed for centuries, and all recent writing by such women must be read against this historical fact.

It is interesting to note that there are parallel stereotypes for white women as well. Ling points out that "two main stereotypes persist for the Asian women in America; they are polar extremes, roughly parallel to the whore/madonna or the 'madwoman in the attic/angel in the house' dichotomies for white women" (Ling, Between Worlds p. 12). Similarly, feminist Sandra Gilbert points out, in her "Toward a Feminist Poetics," "A woman writer must examine, assimilate, and transcend the extreme images of 'angel' and 'monster' which male authors have generated for her" (Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, p. 17). Thus the problem of discrimination and invisibility is not limited to Asian women but is common to all women.

Various theorists have tried to define the feminine imagination. The early French feminist, Simone de Beauvoir, offers this attempt in The Second Sex: "I shall try to show exactly how the concept of the 'truly feminine' has been fashioned—why woman has been defined as the Other—and what have been the consequences from man's point of view" (Beauvoir, p. xxix). Elaine Showalter, however, warns against going too far in stretching the feminist issue: "I am also uncomfortable with the notion of a 'female imagination.' The theory of a female sensibility revealing itself in an imagery and form specific to women always runs dangerously close to reiterating the familiar stereotypes" (Showalter, p. 273). I agree with Showalter. Although I understand and support the feminist's need to assert herself in society, I believe social issues and literary principles should be clearly separated and even distinguished. The idea that the female's mind has qualities inherently different from the male's is itself discriminatory. Nor do I believe that only women can create and understand women characters. Memorable characters such as Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, among numerous others, have been created by male authors. Madame Bovary's mind has been realistically and sympathetically portrayed by Flaubert. Likewise, Anna Karenina's mind, filled with insecurities and jealousies, has been drawn compassionately but accurately by Tolstoy. Good artists are hardly limited to writing only about their own sex.

Nor do I believe that "American literature is male," as Judith Fetterley states in her "Introduction to the Politics of Literature" (Fetterley, p. 493). The images of Louisa Alcott's four sweet little women, the sensuous and suffering Scarlet O'Hara, Daisy Miller, Isabel Archer, and countless other heroines are a prominent part of American literature. People have a capacity to understand each other despite differences of race and gender. Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, James Michener's Hawaii, and James Clavell's Shogun are stories about foreign settings and characters, yet the American audience can still understand and enjoy these stories. If this were not true, Comparative Literature departments would have to close their doors. The degree of understanding is determined largely by a writer's skill. As Booth quotes Kant, "the understanding is universal in the sense of being shared by all human beings" (Booth, Critical Understanding, p. 262).

Nor should imaginative characters be manipulated to fit psychoanalytic theories. I do not agree with David Holbrook, who argues in Images of Women in Literature, "If we are to understand the symbolism of culture around the figure of woman, we must attend to these processes of consciousness and find new modes of understanding that will bring together the explorations of the therapists—working under a deep and grave engagement with severe problems—and the interests of the literary critic who tries to investigate the truth of human experience" (Holbrook, p. 4). This new approach seems not to enrich our understanding of human experience but rather to confuse and complicate understanding. To try to put a character on a psychiatric couch is like trying to talk to paper dolls. Art should be left alone as art. For example, Mona Lisa's simple face and gentle smile are considered by many the most beautiful in the world. Of what value would it be to ask why she is smiling or what she is thinking about? A beautiful image of a woman created by an artist and appreciated by its audience has its own validity. Fictional characters are an author's creations. The job of the psychoanalyst is to attend to real people, not fictional characters.

Almost all studies of Asian American literature have been sociologically oriented. Kim's approach is typical: "I have deliberately chosen to emphasize how the literature elucidates the social history of Asians in the U.S. within the sociohistorical and cultural contexts important to me because when these contexts are unfamiliar, the literature is likely to be misunderstood and unappreciated" (Kim, Asian American Literature, p. xv). It is certainly true that racial prejudice has affected the portrayal of stereotypes in literature, but I would like to add James Baldwin's comment that "Literature and sociology are not one and the same; it is impossible to discuss these as if they are." Characters in stories should not be taken out of the imaginative worlds to which they belong. Thus, when we look at the images of women in the works of Asian American writers, we should judge them in the context of the imaginative texts in which we find them. One cannot take a flower out of an impressionistic painting and describe it as a real flower. Nor can one pick a leaf from a Van Gogh painting and look at it under a microscope. The total imagery of the work should be taken into consideration. From whose vision are the characters seen as dragons, tigers, or swans? From whose window in the house of fiction should we look at the images? Are the narrators reliable or unreliable? Are the daughters really telling the mothers' stories? How does self-image affect the telling? Are there recurring images and motifs? What are the authors' basic intentions? These literary questions have been explored in examining works already established in the literary canon. They should be asked here, for to enter the literary canon all works should undergo the same literary scrutiny.

The author's careful choice of words in creating a certain image is crucial to one's overall artistic creation. As Booth says in The Rhetoric of Fiction, "The author makes his readers. If he makes them badly—that is, if he simply waits, in all purity, for the occasional reader whose perceptions and norms happen to match his own, then his conception must be lofty indeed if we are to forgive him for his bad craftsmanship. But if he makes them well—that is, makes them see what they have never seen before, moves them into a new order of perception and experience altogether—he finds his reward in the peers he has created" (Booth, Rhetoric of Fiction, p. 397). Booth's point is especially relevant here, for if an American audience is to understand stories with Asian and Asian American characters, the authors have to employ the right elements of style and structure to make the audience understand their intentions.

Embedded in different rhetorical strategies, these new images by Asian American writers constitute a crucial part of the various works. How clearly these images are communicated to the reader depends on the writer's skill and the reader's understanding. I agree with Scholes and Kellogg that "the story takes the shape its author has given it, a shape governed for us primarily by the point of view through which the characters and events are filtered" (Scholes and Kellogg, p. 275). How effectively the authors have used point of view and other narrative strategies depends on their background and skill. Kingston and Tan, born and educated in the States, have used similes and metaphors that are familiar to Americans. Dragons, tigers, stairs, and bones are used to depict and define the Asian American woman. These images suggest how recent Asian American women define themselves. Paradoxically, these same images conjure up different connotations for an Asian audience. For example, it is considered unfavorable in Asia to describe a woman as a tiger. The image of a tiger woman in Asia implies someone cunning and vicious. Different animals conjure up different associations in various cultures. To be called a pig is insulting in America, but in Korea a woman born in the year of a pig is praised for her gentle qualities. Such images and their meanings can be confusing if an Asian American writer does not consider their effect on a non-Asian reader. And the Asian American writer must keep other differences in mind as well. Even such elements as colors have to be treated with care. The color red in China means good luck. Thus brides wear a red wedding dress. But for a bride to wear a red dress in the Western literary tradition would suggest a fallen woman. To convey a certain image, then, the Asian American artist cannot present a photocopy of the Asian American world but an artistic reproduction of life shaped by his guiding principles and images.

Knowledge of different customs and body language is also important if the writer is to capture the essence of certain scenes. For example, when Hana in Uchida's Picture Bride notices Yamaka, a young man staring at her "squarely," she feels horrified. The American reader might wonder why she is "horrified," as Uchida does not explain the matter. However, it is natural for Hana to feel this way because in Asian culture a man should not stare directly at another man's wife. There are numerous other nonverbal communication patterns and gestures which need to be translated to an American audience. Just as a foreigner can become confused when visiting a foreign country, a foreign character can be misunderstood by an American audience. Rich nuances and subtle gestures can be lost on this audience. As Susan Jerrolds says in "Masculinity as Excess in Vietnam Films," "Thus, while the concept of excess enables us to read individual narrative arrangements, it enables us to see as well how cultural narratives are negotiated, reformulated, and 'adopted'" (Jerrolds, p. 1007). As Jerrolds remarks, authors trying to embody cultural narratives often employ very strong stylistic devices to make their points clear.

Of course, all successful authors employ marked stylistic devices as they embody their intentions. I believe that the novels of Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan are carefully crafted in just this way. In fact, Kingston once remarked to me that her next book will not only have a peaceful theme but also a peaceful style. In other words, Kingston consciously uses style to convey her meaning. Her use of ghosts in The Woman Warrior indicates that this work is not a realistic treatment of an Asian American girl growing up in Stockton, California, but a novel in which realism is overshadowed by fantasy. Here Kingston develops a new form of autobiography not really dependent on her own life, one in which Kingston, as Sidonie Smith points out, "reads herself into existence through the stories her culture tells about women" (Smith, p. 1058). Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club is also a combination of entertaining fact and fable, and The Kitchen God's Wife is a morality tale whose title is taken from a Chinese fairy tale.

There is also the related issue of fidelity to (so-called) historical or cultural fact. For a critic such as Frank Chin, who considers racial heritage the most important issue, it is irritating when he sees the old legends inaccurately incorporated into Kingston's and Tan's works. Chin insists that "Kingston, Hwang, and Tan are the first writers of any race, and certainly the first writers of Asian ancestry, to so boldly fake the bestknown works from the most universally known body of Asian literature and lore in history" (Chin, The Big Aiiieeeee, p. 3). It is true that Kingston and Tan have distorted Chinese legends, but I hope to show that to have presented the real legends would have distorted the essence of their imaginative works and that the primary purpose of their works is hardly to reproduce legends.

The images of Asian American women presented by writers such as Monica Sone, Mary Paik, Wakako Yamauchi, Hisaye Yamamoto, Yoshiko Uchida, Jade Snow Wong, and Kim Ronyoung are similar to the new definition of the Asian American woman as embodied in Kingston and Tan. This study examines nine novels, four autobiographies, two short stories, and a poem by these Asian American women writers. It includes a study of mothers and daughters in Kingston's The Woman Warrior and Tan's The Joy Luck Club; a study of girls growing up in California in Wong's The Fifth Chinese Daughter, Paik's The Quiet Odyssey, Uchida's Journey to Topaz, Journey Home, A Jar of Dreams, and Desert Exile, Sone's Nisei Daughter, and Kingston's The Woman Warrior; a study of wives in Uchida's Picture Bride, Ronyoung's Clay Walls, The Woman Warrior, and The Kitchen God's Wife; a study of madwomen in Yamauchi's "And the Soul Shall Dance," Yamamoto's "The Legend of Miss Sasagawara," and Kingston's portrait of Moon Orchid in The Woman Warrior; and a study of prostitutes and pariahs in Thousand Pieces of Gold by Ruthanne Lum McCunn, "All the Girls Cried" by Kathy Wong, and (once again) The Woman Warrior.

Kingston and Tan are the most prominent of these writers and their images are the most memorable, so I have chosen to begin with the chapter on mothers and daughters. By first examining their exemplary works, filled with new images, the other, more conventional works can be better understood and clarified. The second chapter explores how girls in various works see themselves as second generation Asian Americans. Do the girls undergo similar experiences? How are their experiences portrayed by the different writers? What are the problems of growing up Asian in America? How do the various writers let the audience understand their perceptions? The chapter on wives examines the problems these women face with their husbands, while the chapter on madwomen asks who the madwomen are and what makes them the way they are. The final chapter on prostitutes asks how these women are painted in various texts. Including the mad-women and prostitutes gives a fuller and more realistic representation of Asian American women in America for these prostitutes were the first Asian women to arrive in the States, soon to be followed by the picture brides. Brief historical background is provided to explain the social background and to allow the reader to relate the real and the image. It is also important to understand the milieu of the Asian women writers in studying their images. As Virginia Woolf says in "Women and Fiction," "It is only when we can measure the way of life and the experience of life made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer" (Woolf, p. 44). Comparison to other English, French, and American women writers is occasionally made to show how Asian American women have created their images.

Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine how Asian American women are projected in many works by Asian American women. These images constitute "a portion of the essence of the meaning of the literary work, never a mere decoration" (Holman and Harmon, p. 248). Although created and clothed with various colors, the new image of a courageous Asian American woman dominates each of these works. What emerges from all these works is a new celebration of the Asian American woman. These new images of strength and virtue negate the former stereotypes of Asian American women. Thus, as I noted earlier, Asian American women have recreated their cultural roots in new images. These images are now an integral part of Asian American literature and a valuable addition to the new multicultural American literary tradition.

Feminism in Literature: A Gale Critical Companion