Woman Warrior Quotes

In English Class we just started reading a book called Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong. It's about her life part fiction part non-fiction. We (the class) were asked to identify two quotes that had some significance or meant something to us and explain why.

"In a commensal tradition, where food is precious, the powerful older people made wrongdoers eat alone. Instead of letting them start separate new lives like the Japanese, who could become samurais and geishas, the Chinese family, faces averted but eyes glowering sideways, hung on the the offenders and fed them leftovers."

This quote appealed to me because the author, Maxine Hong, is comparing two similar, yet different cultures. When reading this quote I realized that Maxine Hong seemed to be slightly intimidated and upset with the way that her culture dealed with the outcasts. Maxine Hong directed this quote to her Aunt who had been an outcast in her family and also in the village. She seems to want the outcasts to start anew, like the Japanese outcasts do, and seemed to have wanted her aunt to live a better life - away from her family. I thought that it was really sad that the Chinese want to torture an outcast forever, and never wants to let them go.

"Always hungry, always needing, she would have to beg food from other ghosts, snatch and steal it from those whose living descendants give them gifts...My aunt remains forever hungry. Goods are not distributed evenly among the dead."

This quote is similar to the one above because it's showing more pity that Maxine Hong holds for her Aunt. Being an outcast in one life is one thing, but two lives is heartbreaking. Her aunt was not loved by anybody and had to die leaving into the next world where she wouldn't be accepted once again. Her Aunt's first life had severely affected her second life because her family members didn't bring her anything to eat or even pray, they just forgot her. Even the other ghosts don't want to do anything with her and she just wanders aimlessly begging, stealing, and being an outcast - never resting in peace.