Strong Similarities Between Kingston and Carr's Readings

Strong Similarities Between Kingston & Car’s Readings

Two women wrote outstanding autobiographies. The two chapters that are discussed in this essay are events they wanted to share from their childhood. One has Chinese and the other has English background. One chapter is from “The Woman Warrior” by Maxine Hong Kingston and the other is from “growing Pains” by Emily Carr. However, they root from distant cultures, they have some strong similarities between them that is the aim of this essay. The three most significant similarities between Carr’s and Kingston’s readings are presence of rebellious characters, death of a female relative and strictness of the culture.

To begin with, the first strong similarity between these two chapters is the presence of rebellious characters. In Kingston’s piece, her aunt is the one who is defined by her village as a rebel. Kingston’s mother realizes that the aunt is pregnant despite her husband being gone for years (60). So, it confirms that the aunt has been in a sexual relationship outside of the bond of marriage. Adultery was considered rebellious during 20th century in a small village in china. In addition, Kingston states in her fantasies about her aunt that she was paying attention to her looks instead of living by necessity. An act that could start gossip among villagers (66). Similarly, there is a rebellion in Carr’s piece. Carr, herself is the one who decides to act against her father wishes, however, in the story she mentions that her father was treated like a “God”.” I decided disciplining would be good for father and I made up my mind to cross his will sometimes” (40). Therefore, both Kingston’s aunt and Carr, seemed to resist convention in their time.

The second strong similarity between Carr’s and Kingston’s readings is death of a female relative. All the “No Name Woman” chapter is about Kingston’s aunt suicide and how she struggles with this incident through her assumptions and fantasies she wrote about her. She is about 12-13 years old when her mother tells the story. The story that has been very shocking for her. Her struggle with the shock is strongly obvious when she states” my aunt haunts me” and then closes the chapter with how Chinese fear the drowned one who “waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute” (70). Likewise, Carr experienced her mother’s death at the same age. “I was 12 when mother died-the raw, green Victoria age,12 years old” (38). In addition, the impact of her mother’s death is observable when she remembers the” picnic” they had not long before she died. In addition, the way she closes the chapter by the thought that she maybe was her mother’s favorite child, indicates how much she was struck by this incident in her life. Consequently, Kingston and Carr shared the death of a female relative in their lives which had a great influence on them.

The last and the strongest similarity between the two pieces is strictness of the culture. Kingston and Carr come from two distant cultural backgrounds, however,