The Warrior Woman
In both Western and Eastern literature there are numerous stories of
women characters taking on the non-traditional role of a "warrior".
Below is an excerpt from the book
The Warrior Woman: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by
Maxine Hong Kingston (published 1977) where she tells about the
stories whe heard going up in a Chinese-American family in California.
(This is an excellent book and I highly recommend it.)
When we Chinese girls listened to the adults talking-story, we learned that
we failed if we grew up to be but wives or slaves. We could be heroines,
swordswomen. Even if she had to rage across all China, a swordswoman got
even with anybody who hurt her family. Perhaps women were once so
dangerous that they had to have their feet bound. It was a woman who
invented white crane boxing only two hundred years ago. She was already an
expert pole fighter, daughter of a teacher trained at the Shao-lin
temple, where there lived an order of fighting monks. She was combing her
hair one morning when a white crane alighted outside her window.
She teased it with her pole, which it pushed aside with a soft brush of
its wing. Amazed, she dashed outside and tried to knock the crane off its
perch. It snapped her pole in two. Recognizing the presence of great power,
she asked the spirit of the white crane if it would teach her to fight.
It answered with a cry that white crane boxers imitate today. Later the
bird returned as an old man, and he guided her boxing for many years.
Thus she gave the world a new martial art.
This was one of the tamer, more modern stories, mere introduction. My
mother told others that followed swordswomen through the woods and palaces
for years. Night after night my mother would talk-story until we fell
asleep. I couldn't tell where the stories left off and the dreams
began, her voice the voice of the heroines in my sleep. And on Sunday,
from noon to midnight, we went to the movies at the Confucius Church.
We saw swordswomen jump over houses from a standstill; they didn't even
need a running start.
At last I saw that I too had been in the presence of great power, my
mother talking-story. After I grew up, I heard the chant of
Fa Mu Lan,
the girl who took her father's place in battle. Instantly , I remembered
that as a child I had followed my mother about the house, the two of us
singing about how Fa Mu Lan fought gloriously and returned alive from
war to settle in the village. I had forgotten this chant that was
once mine, giving me by my mother, who may not have known its power to
remind. She said I would grow up to be a wife and a slave, but she taught
me the song of the warrior woman,
Fa Mu Lan. I would have to grow up a warrior woman.
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