"Meaning is not always conveyed by words" (Skard)

One of Maxine Hong Kingston’s most prominent themes in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is that of identity creation, and while many academics have examined the theme of identity creation in the book, there is a surprising lack of research into how Kingston’s use of color underscores that theme. This seems surprising given that color surrounds us and influences our daily lives, even when we may not think about it. This video shows color symbolism and how it is used in marketing.

There are critics who discuss color in Maxine Hong Kingston’s work, usually in reference to race and race relations. Mita Banerjee uses Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey and August Wilson’s Ma Rainy’s Black Bottom to illustrate that a minority will take on personality traits based on the color of their skin—though this is an empty concept. Other authors have also discussed specifically Kingston’s work from a racial point of view with emphasis on color taking the form of mentions of black or yellow skin (Myer; Schueller).

However, analyzing The Woman Warrior and its colors from only a racial point of view leaves a lot of color unexplored. Kingston herself states, in reference to the many reviews that approach The Woman Warrior, from a only racial perspective: “…I believed that I had written with such power that the reality and humanity of my characters would bust through any stereotype of them” (Cultural Misreadings, 55). Kingston wanted the reader to look at the whole of her work and to understand that there are many ways of looking at her work. We will see that color-as-racism does play a part in Kingston’s narrative. However, when we analyze all of the colors in The Woman Warrior, we find that Kingston uses color in other fascinating ways to underscore her theme of identity creation. 

Many people have explored identity creation as a theme in The Woman Warrior. E.D. Huntley lists constructing identity as a major theme in The Woman Warrior. Huntley describes two specific types of identity; “the immigrant identity, exemplified by Brave Orchid; and the Asian American identity, embodied by the narrator” (104). Her viewpoint suggests that both Brave Orchid and the narrator are navigating the paths of biculturalism. In contrast to Huntley, Naveen Ahmad examines The Woman Warrior from an autobiographical perspective. He suggests that it is through the context of writing her stories that Kingston finds her identity. Ahmad posits that Kingston is creating herself “…through the textuality of fictions, fables, dreams and myths. It is through the autobiographical discourse in particular and language in general that the self is brought into being” (181). Like Huntley, Ahmad finds finds identity formation in Kingston’s work, but neither of them make any mention of how color might underscore those themes.

That is not to say that no-one picks up on color symbolism in The Woman Warrior. Gayle Sato points out the the narrator’s all black drawings that represent the black curtains of the stage and infers that the story of Fa Mu Lan, which explodes with color, is what is really going on inside the child’s head (139). Soltysik Monnet Agnieszka takes this one step further and argues that the Fa Mu Lan story is really a “…drug enhanced daydream…” (10).  Most people who notice color in The Woman Warrior talk about the Fa Mu Lan story because it's a riot of all the colors of the rainbow. People don't seem to notice that the reason the Fa Mu Lan story stands out is the lack of color in the stories before and after. 

But honestly, we shouldn’t be surprised that no-one has analyzed The Woman Warrior from a color symbolism perspective. Color symbolism is underrepresented in literature analysis. For a clue why we can look at an argument in the art world that has lasted for hundreds of years: what is more important, color or form? Kassia St. Clair, in The Secret Lives of Color, states that anciently people felt that “Color was a distraction from the true glories of art: line and form. It was seen as self-indulgent…” (29).

This prejudice against color has seeped into how literature is examined. Literary analysis emphasizes “line and form” or, as I’ll call it “theme and word.” However, there is more to a written work than "theme and word". Weller Embler argues that, “…meaning is not always conveyed by words…” and suggests that symbols should never be overlooked (48). While Embler does not necessarily talk about color as symbolism, the fact that symbols can form their own ideas of communication, and that colors have their own culturally symbolic meanings means that color symbolism should not be ignored. So let's take a look at each of the colors associated with the five major female characters in The Woman Warrior; No Name Aunt, Fa Mu Lan, Brave Orchid, Moon Orchid, and the girl who doesn’t talk, and see what those colors say about how the narrator feels about these women along with how they end up influencing her identity.

First, it is worth looking at the differences in color symbolism between traditional Chinese and American cultures. For lessons in cultural color connotations, these websites are great: Alizzi, Hang, He, or Li.

Color in The Woman Warrior starts out in a gut-punching, almost horror movie fashion. In “No Name Woman” there are only three stated colors: red, black, and white. 

Black is for loneliness. When the aunt is giving birth, alone and outside the narrator states, “The black well of sky and stars went out and out and out forever; her body and her complexity seemed to disappear” (14). The black sky stretching on forever accentuates the aunt’s loneliness. Black is also used as the narrator imagines her aunt trying to attract a man. Her aunt tries to make her black hair pretty (9). But here also, is implied loneliness. The aunt is alone. Her husband is gone. The aunt making changes to her black hair is the only way that she can reach out to another to fight that emptiness.

Red is mentioned only twice. When the villagers enter into the yard and start killing the animals of the aunt’s family, they leave red handprints on the windows, and one woman swings a “chicken, whose throat she had slit, splattering blood in red arcs about her” (4). This gruesome scene implies a power structure: the villagers are powerful, the family is not. The aunt has given away her power by her actions. The red blood also foreshadows the painful birth of the child. 

The color white symbolizes disguise and falseness. When the villagers enter the yard and house to wreak their vengeance, they come wearing white masks (4). The other two times white is mentioned are about the no name woman and her husband. The first is when the narrator’s mother realizes the aunt is pregnant because of the “…white tops of her black pants showing…” (3). The other is about the absent husband whom the aunt can’t really remember, whom she only spent one night with, possibly only seeing the “…black and white face in the group photograph…” (7). Associating the colors of black/loneliness and white/disguise to these two people who don’t know each other at all makes them both feel unreal. The fact that white is associated with these two also underscores the concept of falseness as it is the No Name Woman who is false to her husband. 

The stark colors in this chapter underscore the tension and conflict that will become broader themes in the story. The narrator notices the lack of color in the chapter, and ties it to her questions about growing up when she says, “…newly men and women, had to efface their sexual color” (Kingston, 11). As youth, we often wonder who we are, and it’s easy to see the world in stark colors, and the narrator of The Woman Warrior is no different. Here we have a narrator, through the symbolic use of color, beginning to question who she is. She is a youth entering the world of womanhood—a womanhood that seems stark, painful, and lonely. 

Our narrator moves from youthful black and white into a gorgeous teenage fantasy world. 

She tries to make sense of her life as she fantasizes herself as Fa Mu Lan. In contrast to the few stark colors of the previous chapter, the tale of Fa Mu Lan explodes with every color of the rainbow. The old couple who are her teachers is gold (27). There are nods to earth tones: brown, green, and yellow (21, 23). Red is mentioned  as life-giving fire that “…is stored in trees that grow red flowers or red berries in the spring or whose leaves turn red in the fall” (24). Even some of Fa Mu Lan's emotions are colored. “Oh, green joyous rush…” (25). “I nodded, orange and warm” (26). 

White plays a large role in this section, starting with the white tigers referenced in the chapter title. In Chinese culture, tigers are considered the king of the beasts and the guardians of the west. Fa Mu Lan is forced to spend the night with the white tigers alone, symbolizing the narrator’s lonely move into American “western” culture. White, in Chinese culture, also symbolizes death. As Fa Mu Lan takes this journey into the mountains, Kingston may be examining her own loneliness as she confronts the death of her Chinese heritage, much in the way a teenager often seeks to throw off the values and beliefs of their parents. After Fa Mu Lan conquers the mountains, the colors become even more poignant. The earth is a blue and green pearl (33). The gifts the villagers give to Fa Mu Lan when she comes to save them are bright and colorful. She uses the power color of red to inspire her army, playing into the traditional Chinese belief that red is a color of luck. She prevails. 

Then reality intrudes. One quickly realizes that the “White Tigers” chapter is a tale of two color stories. “My American life has been such a disappointment” the narrator states, and the struggle of trying to become self-aware is brutally shown in the remaining colors in the chapter (45).

There are only three actual color words in the last half of the chapter, and they are not used in a positive fashion. Yellow is used in a racist comment in reference to black people (and, perhaps, a jab at the narrator herself) by one of her employers (48). (It should be noted that while Kingston disavowed the racial overtones of her work in favor of a more humanistic approach, we see here that even she cannot avoid the reality of how strongly color, ethnicity, and racism are tied together in America.) Blue is the color of an envelope. Red is used to reference communistic China and as the color of the hair of a medium. Neither of those red references are people that the narrator trusts. It is almost as if the narrator is saying that real life is horrible and colorless. 

    This chapter is a bit like a teenager’s mood swings; high as a kite one day when the world is full and beautiful, and then low in the dumps the next day, with no color and no power; a contrast of dreams and reality. It is also interesting to note that the first two chapters the narrator looks at people who exist only in a fantasy world. In the next three chapters she grows up and turns her focus to living beings.

A new, fascinating color contrast comes as Kingston contrasts Brave Orchid, the narrator’s mother, and Moon Orchid, the narrator’s aunt. The color most associated with Brave Orchid is black, but it is not an absence of color, nor is it the lonely black of the no name woman. It is a powerful black. A black of leadership and strength. The story takes place in China, which is ironic, because the illustrated black is more of an American-type black. In “Shaman,” Brave Orchid goes to school to become a doctor/midwife. She confronts black ghosts in her black uniform, and with the help of her classmates, a “circle of little black women,” eliminates them (75). She tames monsters and has a fabulous reputation as a doctor. 

Brave Orchid sees herself as a dragon (another powerful symbol in Chinese culture) with “…red sequin scales and…coiling green stripes” (67). In China, Brave Orchid is a woman of confidence and power. While we see fewer colors associated with Brave Orchid in America, she is still strong, in a very Chinese fashion.  

  In contrast, Moon Orchid is described as a “tiny, tiny lady, very thin, with little fluttering hands, and her hair was in a gray knot. She was dressed in a gray wool suit…so old, so gray” (117). That's it, aside from being reminded that her white hair proves she is old. There is color surrounding Moon Orchid; the “yellow and pink plastic beads, sequins, and turquoise blue flowers” that she gives as gifts, but she herself comes across colorless. 

She is shown to be the opposite of Brave Orchid in every way. She only meets her husband at Brave Orchid’s insistence, and when that even finally happens, she sits in silence and tears (153). Unlike Brave Orchid’s desire to learn, both in China and in America, Moon Orchid cannot learn anything new. Brave Orchid tries to put her to work, but the best Moon Orchid can do is fold towels and that not very well (140). We end Moon Orchid’s chapter, “At the Western Palace,” with Moon Orchid’s death and with a feeling that she lived a useless, colorless life. 

The last female that Kingston examines in The Woman Warrior is herself. In the chapter “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” the narrator has a symbolic confrontation with herself as she abuses the girl who won’t speak. The girl is everything that the narrator hates about herself. She describes the girl as having pink and white cheeks, and blue clothes and responds with saying “I hated pastels” (177). The girl doesn't fight back as the narrator abuses her and the narrator thinks, “I hated fragility” (176) As the narrator hits and pulls the hair of the girl with no voice, the narrator is fighting herself, her desire to speak, and her desire to grow up. The narrator becomes the antithesis of this girl when she finally says what she feels to her parents (201-202). She finds her voice and rebels and in that moment she begins to discover herself.

After so many colors and stories, what are the colors of adulthood and womanhood?  In a moment of understanding and surrender, the narrator states, “…colors are gentler and fewer…” (205). This pivotal moment in the book shows the narrator understanding that life is neither the stark red, black, and white conflict of the “No Name Woman” nor the fantasy multi-colored brilliance of the Fa Mu Lan Story in “White Tigers.” It is also not colorless. She has examined the stories of Brave Orchid and Moon Orchid. She has faced herself, both in a literal and a metaphorical sense. Becoming a Chinese American woman means seeing her past, coming to terms with her stories, and fusing them into herself.

This is beautifully illustrated in the tonal color of the story of Ts’ai Yen. At first, Ts’ai Yen cannot understand the music of the barbarian culture. “The music disturbed Ts’ai Yen; it’s sharpness and it’s cold made her ache. It disturbed her so that she could not concentrate on her own thoughts” (208). But in time, she started to sing, not the song of the barbarians, but her own words. “Her words seemed to be Chinese, but the barbarians understood their sadness and anger. Sometimes they thought they could catch barbarian phrases about forever wandering” (209). In the gold of the desert, Kingston finds a fusing of the old and the new in her own womanhood in the musical color of the barbarian reed pipe.