초록 열기/닫기 버튼
The initial reception of Maxine Hong Kinston's The Woman Warrior as a nonfiction autobiography is misguiding, for it neglects magical realist characteristics of the novel. This paper examines the narrative traits of The Woman Warrior in the light of magical realism. The narrator's stories are less of the objective descriptions than of her own imagination based on the stories told by her mother. Her stories take the form of myths and the mix of fantasy and reality, bewildering the readers as a result. The theoretical analysis of magical realism is provided by Fredric Jameson's epochal work on magical narratives. The critique of magical realism by Gayatri Spivak is also crucial in understanding the genre, for she makes a valid point about the liability of magical realism to be exploited as a byword for characterizing minor literature. Other critiques such as Irene Guenther and Christopher Warnes further argue that the origin of magical realism can be traced back to the German literary tradition. This paper contends that magical realism used in The Woman Warrior is conducive to foregrounding the oppressed voices of Chinese subaltern women. By invoking the oppressed memories from her family, the narrator endows voice to her subaltern aunts and her mother. The Woman Warrior is no longer considered as “minor literature.” Rather, it is one of the most frequently taught texts in America. Thus, magical realism should be illuminated as a subversive genre that can excavate the hitherto neglected and oppressed narratives of subaltern people.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior, Magical Realism, Subaltern, Spivak.
