The Woman Warrior

http://www.the-reel-mccoy.com/movies/1998/images/mulan2.jpg
Thank God this is not Disney's Mulan

"The model minority." This term, offensive on multiple levels, has been applied to Asian Americans. In complete disregard to the history of this ethnic group, this term means that in general Asian Americans have lower crime rates, have higher education rates, and have higher salaries than almost any other ethnic group in the country. But what is so derisive of this term is that certain minorities do not fit "the model" or that Asian Americans strive only to be successful.http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Tor_Chinatown_San_Francisco.JPG

Any visitor to San Francisco can see that Asian Americans are a diverse and culturally significant ethnic group in this country. Their experiences are equally as diverse in this country. Some Asian Americans may be more detached with Asian heritage than others, much like I consider myself more detached from my Hispanic heritage than other Hispanics around me.
I do not think many Asian American woman could relate to the "No Name Woman," who "the villagers punished...for acting as if she could have a private life, secret and apart from them." (Kingston 13) At the same time, I am sure many Asian Americans I have met could completely relate to the gender pressures that the No Name Woman went through and the story would not seem so far-fetched.
That being said, even if Kingston's experience is not typical of most modern Asian American woman, she has amazing emotional pain that speaks volumes about the Asian American experience. "To avenge my family, I'd have to storm across China to take back our farm from the Communists; I'd have to rage across the United States to take back the laundry in New York and the one in California" (Kingston 49). Everything in this last sentence is something unique to Asian American history.
I do not think that Kingston wrote this in an attempt to speak for all Asian American woman; rather I think she wrote it to bring light to a certain type of experience that never seems to gather much attention in American culture. Her connection to both her immediate family history and traditional Chinese mythology provides even further insight to her experience. The dual-clashes of the Chinese and American cultures provide an interesting backdrop for her story. As such, these stories breathe life in to her narrative and allow her to fully extrapolate the origins of some of her fealings.