Psychological Impacts Of Talk-Stories In The Woman Warriou:Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts

This thesis interprets The Woman Warrior:Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts as records of the growing pains and doubts of a Chinese American girl who grows up in her mother’s storytelling culture. Drawing on the clues in both autobiographical texts and rich authorial comments in interviews, the thesis teases out the original biographical timeline from early childhood, to stormy adolescence and mature adulthood, in an endeavor to investigate the mixed impacts of inherited talk-stories on the girl narrator’s psychological maturation in the trans-cultural Chinese American context.Incorporation of the collective narrative pattern of "talk-story" into the Western individual genre of autobiography signifies the girl narrator’s struggle and success in growing on the border of the two different cultures. Mother’s talk-stories are divided into two kinds:stories like Fa Mu Lan and her mother at a younger age give her hope of self-actualization within the framework of communal responsibility, and stories like No Name Woman and Moon Orchid serve as admonition against the cultural transgression and tragedy of cultural misplacement. The mother’s talk-stories as a communal practice in essence are intended to protect and nurture her children in strict accordance with the shared values and mores in her Chinese community. However, the maternal authority diminishes as the girl’s school initiation ushers her in the baffling clash between Chinese home culture and American public culture. The unexplained secrecy in mother’s talk-stories troubles the adolescent girl and alienates her from heritage culture. Leaving home the adult narrator realizes that the American individualistic culture does not take her as an insider either. The autobiographical writing gradually manifests its self-healing function as the protagonist in her embellishment and elaboration of her inherited talk-stories and problematic selfhood. In the re-memory, both her sense of selfhood and sense of world change. Eventually, she detaches from her small self in a single culture and by enlarging vision attains her sense of being self in relation to the Other.Comprehensive understanding of the girl narrator’s psychological growth from her initial alienation to ultimate reconciliation with her mother and her mother’s talk stories takes on a social significance with regard to the study on the psychological well-being of immigrant youths in their process of adaptation and acculturation.