Robbi Nurdin Hidayat
1006756484
A Song for a Barbarian
Reed Pipe
Being Active or Being
Passive In the Community (American)
In
the final chapter of The Woman Warrior
“A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe”, Kingston put some perspectives about Chinese-American
culture and American Culture itself. It caused many cultural clash between the Chinese-American
and American because as we know that both are different though. Kingston, in
this chapter, showed that how Chinese-American should behave among American
because they are the minor community. In this essay, I would like to show you
that the minor community (Chinese-American) can be influenced by the dominant
one (American). I took several
aspects of culture between the two.
In
this chapter, the first thing I want to show that how Chinese-American become
silence in the community. After Kingston’s mother cut her tongue so that she
can speak in every language, she actually became
silence. She could not speak in English at first she came into kindergarten.
Every Chinese-American girl was silence. “I knew the silence had to do with
being a Chinese girl” (p.166), I pointed out that Chinese was actually silence
among American. According to
cliffsnotes, Not only about being Chinese-American
should be silence, but also Chinese pronunciation is loud and hard, as Kingston
said that “ChingChong ugly”. It showed that the Chinese spoken is a shame for
American ears. Thus, they wanted to be American girl, to be able to speak like
them, to be American-Feminine. However, they, in fact, became too soft and hard
to be heard.
The
second thing that caused Kingston was being silenced or passive in the
community, she remembered about what her mother said to her “Don’t tell” (p.
183), she actually knew that her mother wanted her to keep the secrecy of the Chinese.
Hence from that, Kingston never told American about everything related with Chinese
because as her mother said “Immigration secrets whose telling could get us sent
back to China”. It seemed that her mother or other Chinese’s parents were still
keep Chinese tradition secretly even to their children, they did not tell it, “we
couldn’t tell if we wanted to because we didn’t know” (p.183). Nevertheless, her mother
just wanted to unharmed her children from American (Ghost) and to keep their
children on the path of Chinese culture “God’s
you avoid won’t hurt you”, (p.185).
In my opinion, Chinese
first-generation distributed their beliefs to their children, so that their
children will not be influenced by other belief or culture that can make them
became Ghost.
Sometimes,
being Chinese girl in America was terrified and full of misery especially when
Kingston’s mother cut her tongue. However, there were some moments where Chinese-American
could speak loudly, yelling, even screaming each other. The first moment they
became active is in the Chinese community (Chinese school). They became so
happy, enjoy full, and cheerful. As I quote from the text “There we chanted
together, voices raising and falling, loud and soft, some boys shouting,
everybody reading together, reciting together, and not alone with one voice”,
(p. 167). It showed that Chinese became active when they were in their
community among their Chinese society. Besides, they were also one more moment
that can make them shouted and yelled, that was home. They spoke each other,
with father or mother, sister or brother in Chinese language, “I talked at home
and to one or two of the Chinese kids in class (p. 166).
The
second moment is that, when she wanted to adjust with how women in America supposed to be. We can see from the text on
the page 201, when she (Kingston) was extremely angry with her mother about matching
her to the retarded man from Senior High School. As she said “I am not going to
be a slave or a wife.” And then “and I’m not going to Chinese school anymore.
I’m going to run for office at American school”. It made everything different
because there was rational ways of thinking came into Kingston’s mind and made
her mad to her mother. She said “and I don’t want to listen to anymore of your
stories, they have no logic”. It indicated that Kingston did not want to stand
on Chinese path anymore because she prefered what
was logic and what was not in this world. I could say that Kingston became so
dramatically different because she was influenced by Ghost. In this case, she,
indirectly, wanted to refuse her Chinese life and forget everything about what
her mother had said to her, though. As a result of this event, her mother
called her “Ho Chi Kuei” that means “Good Foundation Ghosts”.
In
brief, the influences of dominant community can make a person lose his/her personality
and cultural aspect that he/she has ever had though. As Kingston reflected in
her story “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe”, she was at first Chinese-American
girl who always advised by her mother to avoid telling American (Ghost) about
everything she knew from her mother. However, as we can see during the time she
was in America, communed with American, she became more rationalistic and logic because she thought everything her mother said was not
logic, they wanted to know and also to see was that true or not?
On the moment of marry her
off with retarded man, she became self-out controlled and said everything to
show her rejection (she saw in America were
real and she experienced it) of Chinese life. As a
result, Kingston left her Chinese life “I had to leave home in order to see the
world logically, logic the new way of seeing” (p. 204). The way someone see
something, the way their life would be. It is
stated that the influences of the dominant community (America) are so strong, it
changes the way of their life, even in the minor community they still keep what
they believe of, such as their past tradition (Chinese Immigrants) and other
beliefs.
Daftar Pustaka
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/woman-warrior/summary-analysis/a-song-for-a-barbarian-reed-pipe.html
The Woman Warrior Story, The
Final Chapter ”a Song for a Barbarian
Reed Pipe”
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