Food and Power: A Female Struggle in The Woman Warrior Anonymous College

In Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, conflicts involving hunger are clearly of significance, appearing throughout every chapter of her memoir from “No Name Woman” to “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe.” Paul Outka’s “Publish or Perish: Food, Hunger and Self-Construction in The Woman Warrior” argues that Kingston uses food to symbolize body and mind; while food fulfills physical need, it also represents desire and aspirations. More specifically, Outka believes the narrator Maxine struggles with adhering to the traditional Chinese expectations of women (her physical need) while being unrestrained in her expression of identity through writing The Woman Warrior (her non-physical desires). While not explicitly disagreeing with Outka’s interpretation, I would like to take Kingston’s use of food in a different direction: toward defining one’s identity through their power over food. Kingston uses female struggles with food to thread a common issue through the novel, an issue faced by No Name Woman, Fa Mulan, Brave Orchid and eventually Maxine. By understanding each woman’s individual struggles with food, we come to learn more about each woman’s unique identity. Therefore, triumphs over food within Chinese culture reflect each...