Kingston's In White Tigers

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indulgence - is a clever blend of myths, fiction and non-fiction that continually conflates and challenges the orthodox notions of genre categories. Perhaps, it is not so much about Kingston’s revelation of a delicate harmony between her two competing cultures, but rather Kingston’s role as a “diarist” to provide only the “most deeply … highest … furthest” kind of “exposition” - repeatedly shuttling between fantasy and specificity, imposing compelling invigorating form on either the chaotic or mundane materials of lives lived - that makes her memoir simultaneously so arousing, yet controversial nevertheless. In the process, Kingston has thus suggested that the dissimilarity between what is autobiographically factual, and what is entirely fictitious …show more content…
Indeed, Kingston recounts the story of Fa Mu Lan with such lush, mystic and wonder. She indulges in and embellishes, pleasurably with a wide grin on her face, the story of a glorious Chinese woman warrior who could excel, all at the same time, in the masculine sphere of warfare, and embrace the traditional female moral obligations and duties at home. Unlike the usually degraded Chinese girl, the woman warrior is filled with strength and honor; Kingston transposes the story in a poetic form, making it overwhelmingly beautiful, whimsical, and almost dreamlike. On the contrary, starkly juxtaposed to the chimerical Chinese culture is her description of her American reality - disruptively prosaic and unimaginative, balanced on a knife-edge of hope and humiliation.
No doubt, Kingston’s version of Fa Mu Lan deviates notably from the ancient Chinese folklore “Ballad of Mulan” that critics condemn the liberties that she has taken with her raw materials and her misrepresentation of the Chinese culture. However, it is arguable that as Kingston attempts to interpret the folklore according to her American sensibilities, her version represents, in fact, a unique perspective of her own, reflecting her distinctive subjectivity, views and experiences regarding the idiosyncrasies of society during that particular time and
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