Faculty Introduction for “Femininity, Ghosts, and Feminine Ghosts in The Woman Warrior”

Isabella Baranyk’s essay, “Femininity, Ghosts, and Feminine Ghosts in The Woman Warrior” was written for her Perspectives on the Humanities class, “Embodied Language,” in the spring of 2016. The assignment called for a close examination of select passages from Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. Students were asked to formulate argument-driven narratives that move beyond simple observation and achieve deep critical analysis.

Isabella presents a strong example of this kind of analysis. Her paper reveals how ghosts and women in the novel are both diminished by unequal relations of power, in overt and understated ways. Living people can be disregarded as “ghosts” and women are cast off, challenged, and policed, particularly for the ways in which they express their femininity. Over the course of the paper, Isabella calls attention to the strange and specific ways in which characterizations of ghosts and women intersect in Kingston’s work, alternately, to both unfortunate and empowering ends.

 Eun Joo Kim, Lecturer