Symposium Day Poetry Session Review

This morning I attended the poetry session and listened to the kids who had participated in the Ava's Smile workshop read their poems. It was a fascinating experience in that the poems were different from what I expected. A lot of the poetry that I've grown accustomed to has been very beautiful - beautifully crafted phrases with beautiful choices of words. That isn't to say that the poems today weren't beautiful. They were just more gritty, more raw. Everyone seemed to be writing about the inner and outer struggles they'd faced, rather than casual observations.

So I felt like every poet was sharing something really personal, which sort of felt uncomfortable in some ways because I don't know all of them that well. The fact that they were willing to put themselves out there is very brave. Especially since they were all 9th graders and most of us have only known each other for this year, so there seemed to be a great deal of trust.

I don't remember all of the poems distinctly, but the ones I do remember are the poems that were read well. A big part of poetry is performance, and though everyone was probably nervous, some people were more accustomed to hiding it. There were just a few students who read their poems in this melodic tone that really resonated with me.

Full Rough Draft

         Maxine Hong Kingston’s story “White Tigers” is a fan fiction of the famous tale that originated from “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan,” of a girl taking her father’s place in war. In Hong Kingston’s version she places herself in the story and changes certain things about it to make it suit her – she amplifies some elements, downplays others, and even adds some of her own. Since she is writing a fan fiction about such a legendary heroine, one would think that in writing “White Tigers,” the changes that Hong Kingston makes are intended to improve the character, to make her even more heroic than the original Fa Mu Lan. So it follows that a reader should feel a great deal of respect and awe for such a great hero.

            And yet while reading “White Tigers” I felt no respect for this character. In fact I found myself looking down on her. She did not seem a hero to me – she seemed like a puppet who did nothing valuable or constructive on her own. Therefore it could be possible that girls going to war to save their families just do not impress me. However, another way to consider this problem is by examining “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” itself and seeing how the experience compares. In fact, while reading the original “Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” my feelings towards the heroine were quite different. I did not look down on Fa Mu Lan – instead I admired her. There was something so majestic, yet so humble, about her I found myself really aspiring to. Clearly other people have felt that same admiration, considering that her story has been retold and remade repeatedly, such as in the Disney movie. Yet despite this, “White Tigers” was empty of that quality, of that great heroism, for me. So if I would expect that Hong Kingston in her fan fiction would try to make the character of Fa Mu Lan even more heroic, and yet while I was reading “White Tigers” the narrator did not seem like a hero to me at all, what about Hong Kingston’s writing style made me react this way?  

            Perhaps the answer is that Maxine Hong Kingston’s style moves that she uses to fill in the gaps in “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” are what make her heroine seem less heroic than Fa Mu Lan. Some of these moves include the lack of choices given to the narrator and her submissive attitude towards others making choices for her, how the narrator is treated as an object and a tool by other characters, and how her wartime success is only because she’s had help. Actually, the very places in “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” where Fa Mu Lan seemed the most heroic to me happen to be the same as the places in “White Tigers” where the narrator seemed the least heroic. If you compare the similar passages of the two pieces, you’ll realize that “White Tigers” is ultimately a broken telephone retelling of “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” where new ideas that were not present in the original are muddled in so that the outcome leaves you feeling entirely different. It is not as though Hong Kingston leaves out anything crucial from “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” – she instead adds in new parts in a fashion that alters the experience irreversibly.

            One of the reasons why the narrator seems like less of a hero is that she is given no choices – others make choices for her. Although she does volunteer to go to war in her father’s place (Hong Kingston, 34), it is not as much a choice as an obligation; she has been prepped for this her whole life, as exemplified when the narrator’s father says “You knew from her birth she would be taken (Hong Kingston, 22). It is her birthright so really her volunteering for her father is merely superficial. However, in “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan, she volunteers to go even though no one expects her to: “I want to buy a saddle and a horse, and serve in the army in Father’s place” (Tzu-Yeh, 1). Notice, she says that she wants to do this. This is not an obligation, it is her firmly declaring that she wants to go to war. At this same moment in “White Tigers,” however, the narrator only says “I will take your place” (Hong Kingston, 34). It is not at all something she wants to do. Fa Mu Lan willingly putting herself in danger to save her family – not because she has to but because she wants to – is a far more heroic beau gest than what the narrator of “White Tigers” pulled off. Heroes are chivalrous and brave like Fa Mu Lan, not excessively obedient and submissive like the narrator of “White Tigers.”

            Another way that others make choices for her is when her parents marry her off without her consent (Hong Kingston, 31). But rather than retaliating, which she hypothetically could with her amount of training, she is submissive and goes along with being forcibly married. While in “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” no one directly mentions marrying her off, in the first stanza it is hinted at in “They ask Daughter who’s in her heart, they ask Daugher who’s on her mind” (Tzu-Yeh, 1). This passage depicts that her family is looking for a man that she is interested in, possibly so that they can marry her off. And yet instead of playing along, Fa Mu Lan immediately shuts them down when she says “No one is on Daughter’s heart, no one is on Daughter’s mind” (Tzu-Yeh, 1). As exemplified here, she makes the rules and no one challenges her. Furthermore, it is not only significant that Fa Mu Lan says what she wants to say and makes her own choices, it is also crucial that she is given such a choice. They ask her if she is thinking about a guy – they don’t tell her too. By contrast, the family of the girl in “White Tigers” never asks how she feels about the guy before they marry her to him. She is not given a chance to have an opinion, to argue. Fa Mu Lan is given these choices because there is a central sense of respect that others have for her, something that others do not feel for the narrator of “White Tigers.” Respect is an essential thing for heroes to receive. Heroes work, very hard at times, to earn respect, and are subsequently treated with it. But the narrator in “White Tigers” is not treated with respect by those closest to her, and she never tries to earn it.

            Along with her being forced to go to battle, she is also forced to return to being “a wife and a slave” (Hong Kingston, 20). When she gets home from battle she says to her parents-in-law “I will stay with you, doing farmwork and housework, and giving you more sons” (Hong Kingston, 45). The certainty with which she uses the word “will” has the dutiful feeling that her going to war does. She has no other options at this point than to become a housewife, despite her victory in war. It is pretty insulting that someone who was supposedly such a hero in war should have to succumb to such a hapless future, yet she does not protest. Fa Mu Lan does change back into her “old-time clothes” when she gets home, but her fate is still left ambiguous (Tzu-Yeh 5). She does not have the obligation of returning to her husband and producing more sons. She does not have to do farmwork and housework, or if she does have to do any of these things, Tzu-Yeh decided not to tell us. In the very least it seems like Fa Mu Lan herself will get to choose where to go from here, but the narrator of “White Tigers” does not get such a choice. And although everyone else is deciding her fate for her, she never fights back. A real hero would, because heroes make their own choices and are masters of their own fates.

            In addition to letting others make choices for her, the narrator also seems to be less of a hero in the way she is treated like an object/tool by others. An example of this is how no one seems to care if she lives or dies as long as she serves her purpose, like in the part “She meant that even if I got killed, the people could use my dead body for a weapon” (Hong Kingston, 34). No one, even her parents, is worried whether the narrator lives or dies as long as she serves her purpose. They look at her as an object, as an asset, not as a human being. But also, they don’t care if she dies as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them. This is demonstrated where the old woman says “If you go now, you will be killed, and you’ll have wasted seven and a half years of our time” (Hong Kingston, 32). She is not concerned about the narrator dying because she actually cares about her, but because it would inconvenience the old woman. In “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan,” however, we don’t see Mu Lan’s family treating her the same way. Although they don’t directly state it, it is implicit that Mu Lan’s parents do care whether she lives or dies in that they repeatedly calling after her once she leaves (Tzu-Yeh, 2-3). There is nothing here about them using her body as a weapon; there is no one telling her not to waste their time. In addition to being free to make choices, Fa Mu Lan is also treated like a human being, not someone else’s plaything.

            A different, less extreme form of objectification is how the narrator of “White Tigers” is married off  (Hong Kingston, 31). She is married off as if she is an object, or a product in a store, not a human being with feelings and opinions of her own. This idea that she can be sold like this is dependent on a concept of inferiority – the narrator is treated as less valuable than those around her, even as less than human. But in “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan,” she is looked up to, as depicted in the way her entire family waits in anticipation for her return, her sister putting on makeup to look her best, her little brother sacrificing animals to please her (Tzu-Yeh, 5). Her family appreciates and admires her, whereas the narrator of “White Tigers” is viewed by her family as a product to be sold. The narrator of “White Tigers” is dehumanized and treated as a mere object, which makes her less heroic because real heroes should be looked up to, not looked down upon.

            Another reason that she seems less heroic is that she is completely prepared and equipped to go to war. Firstly, she has received state of the art training from two old people her entire childhood. They have transformed her from the clumsy novice she was at the beginning, “When I stepped carelessly and mussed a line, my feet kicked up new blends of earth colors, but the old man and old woman walked so lightly that their feet never stirred the designs by a needle” (Hong Kingston, 21) into this graceful, agile being, “I could jump twenty feet into the air from a standstill, leaping like a monkey over the hut” (Hong Kingston, 23). The original Fa Mu Lan, on the other hand, had absolutely no preparation, and was thrust into battle – and survived – as the clumsy novice the narrator of “White Tigers” was as a child. Fa Mu Lan, instead, had grown up learning far more mundane tasks, like weaving (Tzu-Yeh 1). Yet despite this, she went into battle and survived while the generals around her “[died] in a hundred battles” (Tzu-Yeh 3). She is your standard storybook hero who comes from humble and average beginnings and yet manages to accomplish great feats. This makes her seem far more heroic than the narrator of “White Tigers” – clearly Mu Lan’s success must’ve came from natural talent and skill buried deep inside her, the narrator of “White Tigers” survived battle because her preparation had infused her with these skills.

            Not only was she better prepared, but the narrator of “White Tigers” also had more resources, like a perfect horse with a perfect saddle (Hong Kingston, 35) and her own army (Hong Kingston, 36). Fa Mu Lan, meanwhile, does not have her own army to defend and support her, and must buy a cheap horse and saddle from market rather than having hers miraculously gifted to her (Tzu-Yeh, 2). Indeed, it is a recurring theme that the narrator of “White Tigers” is just given things that Fa Mu Lan actually had to work for. Another example is the magical weapons that she masters during training and brings with her to war, such as “I could point at the sky and make a sword appear, a silver bolt in the sunlight, and control its slashing with my mind” (Hong Kingston, 33). She literally has a magical indestructible sword, with which she foils giants and other foes. As far as we know, Fa Mu Lan had to deal with whatever makeshift weapons she could find, and yet she survived the war. It seems far less of an achievement that the narrator of “White Tigers” survived the war considering that she had so much help, whereas Fa Ma Lan seems more heroic for surviving war singlehandedly with no experience. Heroes are people who are special, who work hard so that they can do what ordinary people cannot. Yet any person given the resources and training that the girl from “White Tigers” was given could probably survive the war. So there really is nothing special, and by extension nothing heroic, about her.

            Going off of the idea of her not being special, she may seem special while in battle, but once she returns home she takes up “farmwork and housework” (Hong Kingston, 45), very mundane, average tasks. While at war she did seem special in that she was the general of the army that defeated many opponents and unseated the tyrannical emperor to replace him with one of their own, when you think about it all of her success came from other people. She would not have gone to war if it hadn’t been for the pressure of her family, and without her training, equipment, and army, she wouldn’t have lasted the night. When Fa Mu Lan returns home her future is left undecided, but that seems to indicate she has options – she could go out and fight in another war, who knows. She takes off her wartime gown, but she doesn’t incinerate it, so it is still a possibility. But whatever Fa Mu Lan chooses to do next, she still has her success and unlike the narrator, it came truly from herself – it’s something she can be proud of. She is irreversibly a hero, it is now a part of her identity. The fact that the narrator was able to throw away any heroic parts of her so easily indicates that she is not really a hero.

            Furthermore, the reason why the narrator in “White Tigers” seemed less heroic than the original Fa Mu Lan whom Hong Kingston is developing upon is because of the way Hong Kingston fills in the gaps in the tale. If her intention was to create a more fully fleshed-out character, Hong Kingston only partially succeeds; we are given more information about the character as we watch her transition from childhood to adulthood, and yet this information comes mainly from other characters – we still get very little about the character herself, what she likes, what she wants, etc. What we are given only serves to weaken and dehumanize her. Admittedly, “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” is very vague and one could do a lot with it, so Hong Kingston could’ve easily gone in and made her version the even more likeable, heroic, admirable figure. But she didn’t – she creates a character who is a tool in the aspirations of others. As far as why she does it this way, the clues may lay buried in the Afterword, where Hong Kingston explains how growing up, girls were given no opportunities to do something meaningful. They were looked down upon and objectified. Her culture treats women awfully, and “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” is one of the most deep-rooted parts of her culture. So maybe it is possible that her motive can be summed up in the phrase near the beginning of her narrative “She said I would grow up a wife and a slave, but she taught me the song of the warrior woman, Fa Mu Lan” (Hong Kingston, 20). Maybe Hong Kingston is criticizing the unrealistic story she has been told, how it makes girls of her backgrounds wish for things they can never obtain: heroism, glory, pride. She could be theorizing that the only way Fa Mu Lan could have completed such a feat is if others had gotten her there – an achingly cynical view. We can never know if this was her reason or if it was something else, but nevertheless, she reimagines Fa Mu Lan into someone a lot less heroic.

Updated Draft w/ Radical Revisions

Here's my draft thus far - I'll keep updating it on my blog over the next week as I work on it. I did a bunch of "Generating Missing Text" revisions to help better connect the two texts of "White Tigers" and "The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan." From only doing this in some places in my draft I now have a better idea of how to do it in all places, and that is something I will keep working on.
***

Tentative Intro:

            Maxine Hong Kingston’s story “White Tigers” is a fan fiction of the famous tale that originated from “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” of a girl taking her father’s place in war. In Hong Kingston’s version she places herself in the story and changes certain things about it to make it suit her – she amplifies some things, downplays others, and even adds some new parts to the story. Fan fiction is often written to boost self-esteem, so one would think that in writing “White Tigers,” the changes that Hong Kingston makes are to improve the character, to make her even more heroic than the legendary Fa Mu Lan. A reader should feel a great deal of respect and awe for such a great hero.

            And yet while reading “White Tigers” I felt no respect for this character. In fact I found myself looking down on her, despising her at times and pitying her at others. She did not seem a hero to me – she seemed like a puppet who did nothing valuable or constructive on her own. So it could be possible that girls going to war to save their families just do not impress me. However, in reading the original “Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” my feelings were quite different. I did not look down on, despise, or pity Fa Mu Lan – I admired her. There was something so majestic, yet so humble, about her I found myself really aspiring to. Clearly other people have felt that same admiration, considering that her story has been retold and remade repeatedly, such as in the Disney movie. But “White Tigers” was empty of that quality, of that great heroism, for me. So if I would expect that Hong Kingston in her fan fiction would try to make the character of Fa Mu Lan even more heroic, and yet while I was reading “White Tigers” she did not seem like a hero to me at all, what about Hong Kingston’s writing style made me react this way?

            Radical Revision:

            Maxine Hong Kingston’s style moves that she uses to fill in the gaps in “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” are what make her heroine seem less heroic than Fa Mu Lan. Some of these moves include the lack of choices given to the narrator and her submissive attitude towards others making choices for her, how the narrator is treated as an object and a tool by the other characters, and how her wartime success is only because she’s had help. Indeed, the very places in “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” where Fa Mu Lan seemed the most heroic to me are the same as the places in “White Tigers” where the narrator seemed the least heroic. If you hold these two versions side by side and look at the similar passages, it is apparent that the added information from Hong Kingston makes the character seem weaker – if you strip away these additional details the character will seem just as heroic as the original Fa Mu Lan. “White Tigers” is undoubtedly a broken telephone retelling of “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” where new ideas that were not present in the original are muddled in and the outcome leaves you feeling entirely different. It is not as though Hong Kingston leaves out anything crucial from “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” – she instead adds in new parts that alter the experience irreversibly.

            The narrator seems like less of a hero because she is given no choices – others make choices for her. Although she does volunteer to go to war in her father’s place (Hong Kingston, 34) it is not as much a choice as an obligation; she has been prepped for this her whole life, as exemplified when the narrator’s father says “You knew from her birth she would be taken (Hong Kingston, 22). It is her birthright so really her volunteering for her father is merely superficial. Radical Revision: However, in “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan she volunteers to go even though no one expects her to: “I want to buy a saddle and a horse, and serve in the army in Father’s place” (Tzu-Yeh, 1). Notice, she says that she wants to do this. This is not an obligation, it is her firmly declaring that she wants to go to war. At this same moment in “White Tigers,” however, the narrator only says “I will take your place” (Hong Kingston, 34). It is not at all something she wants to do. Fa Mu Lan willingly putting herself in danger to save her family – not because she has to but because she wants to – is a far more heroic beau gest than what the narrator of “White Tigers” pulled off. Heroes are chivalrous and brave like Fa Mu Lan, not puny and submissive like the narrator of “White Tigers.”

            Another way that others make choices for her is when her parents marry her off without her consent, albeit to a childhood friend (Hong Kingston, 31). But rather than retaliating, which she hypothetically could with her amount of training, she is submissive and goes along with being forcibly married. Radical Revision: While in “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” no one directly mentions marrying off, in the first stanza it is hinted at in “They ask Daughter who’s in her heart, they ask Daugher who’s on her mind” (Tzu-Yeh, 1). This passage clearly depicts that her family is looking for a man that she is interested in so they can marry her off. And yet instead of playing along, Fa Mu Lan immediately shuts them down when she says “No one is on Daughter’s heart, no one is on Daughter’s mind” (Tzu-Yeh, 1). As portrayed here, she makes the rules and no one challenges her. If her family tried to marry her off, Fa Mu Lan wouldn’t go along with it, but the narrator of “White Tigers” complacently does. But it is not only that Fa Mu Lan says what she wants to say and makes her own choices, it is also significant that she is given such a choice. They ask her if she is thinking about a guy – they don’t tell her too. In contrast, the family of the girl in “White Tigers” never ask her even if she likes the guy before they marry her to him. She is not given a chance to have an opinion, to argue. Fa Mu Lan is given these choices because there is a central sense of respect that others have for her, something that others do not feel for the narrator of “White Tigers.”

            In contrast with her being forced to go to battle, she is also forced to return to being “a wife and a slave” (Hong Kingston, 20). When she gets home from battle she says to her parents-in-law “I will stay with you, doing farmwork and housework, and giving you more sons” (Hong Kingston, 45). The certainty with which she uses the word “will” has the dutiful feeling that her going to war does. She has no other options at this point than to become a housewife, despite her victory in war. It is pretty insulting that someone who was supposedly such a hero in war should have to succumb to such a hapless future, yet she does not protest. Radical Revision: Fa Mu Lan does change back into her “old-time clothes” when she gets home, but her fate is still left ambiguous (Tzu-Yeh 5). She does not have the obligation of returning to her husband and producing more sons. She does not have to do farmwork and housework, or if she does have to do any of these things, Tzu-Yeh decided not to tell us. In the very least it seems like Fa Mu Lan herself will get to choose where to go from here, but the narrator of “White Tigers” does not get such a choice. And although everyone else is deciding her fate for her, she never fights back. A real hero would, because heroes make their own choices and are masters of their own fates.

            In addition to letting others make choices for her, the narrator also seems to be less of a hero in the way she is treated like an object/tool by others. An example of this is how no one seems to care if she lives or dies as long as she serves her purpose, like in the part “She meant that even if I got killed, the people could use my dead body for a weapon” (Hong Kingston, 34). No one, even her parents, is worried whether the narrator lives or dies as long as she serves her purpose. They look at her as an object, as an asset, not as a human being. But also, they don’t care if she dies as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them. This is demonstrated where the old woman says “If you go now, you will be killed, and you’ll have wasted seven and a half years of our time” (Hong Kingston, 32). She is not concerned about the narrator dying because she actually cares about her, but because it would inconvenience the old woman.

            Her being married off (Hong Kingston, 31) is a less extreme form of objectification but still worth noting. She is married off as if she is an object, or a product in a store, not a human being with feelings and opinions of her own. So overall the narrator is dehumanized and treated instead as a mere object, which makes her seem less heroic because heroes should not be looked down upon, they should be looked up to. *MIGHT NEED SOME MORE EVIDENCE FOR THIS POINT.*

            Another reason that she seems less heroic is that she is completely prepared and equipped to go to war. Firstly, she has received state of the art training from two old people her entire childhood. They have transformed her from the clumsy novice she was at the beginning, “When I stepped carelessly and mussed a line, my feet kicked up new blends of earth colors, but the old man and old woman walked so lightly that their feet never stirred the designs by a needle” (Hong Kingston, 21) into this graceful, agile being, “I could jump twenty feet into the air from a standstill, leaping like a monkey over the hut” (Hong Kingston, 23). The original Fa Mu Lan, on the other hand, had absolutely no preparation, and was thrust into battle – and survived – as the clumsy novice the narrator of “White Tigers” was as a child.

            Not only was she better prepared, but the narrator of “White Tigers” also had more resources, like a perfect horse with a perfect saddle (Hong Kingston, 35) and her own army (Hong Kingston, 36). Fa Mu Lan, meanwhile, does not have her own army to defend and support her, and must buy a cheap horse and saddle from market rather than having hers miraculously gifted to her (Tzu-Yeh, 2). Indeed, it is a recurring theme that the narrator of “White Tigers” is just given things that Fa Mu Lan actually had to work for. Another example is the magical weapons that she masters during training and brings with her to war, such as “I could point at the sky and make a sword appear, a silver bolt in the sunlight, and control its slashing with my mind” (Hong Kingston, 33). She literally has a magical indestructible sword, with which she foils giants and other foes. As far as we know, Fa Mu Lan had to deal with whatever makeshift weapons she could find, and yet she survived the war. It seems far less of an achievement that the narrator of “White Tigers” survived the war considering that she had so much help, whereas Fa Ma Lan seems more heroic for surviving war singlehandedly with no experience. Heroes are people who are special, who work hard so that they can do what ordinary people cannot. Yet any person given the resources and training that the girl was given could probably survive the war. So there really is nothing special, and by extension nothing heroic, about her.

            Going off of the idea of her not being special, she may seem special while in battle, but once she returns home she takes up “farmwork and housework” (Hong Kingston, 45), very mundane, average tasks. While at war she did seem special in that she was the general of the army that defeated many opponents and unseated the tyrannical emperor to replace him with one of their own, when you think about it all of her success came from other people. She would not have gone to war if it hadn’t been for the pressure of her family, and without her training, equipment, and army, she wouldn’t have lasted the night. Heroes have something special about them that is not material, that is beneath the surface. Yet strip the narrator of everything superficial and she is no one, no one at all. We know nothing about her interests and hobbies, about who she is, about what makes her special. Aside from a few bizarre personal details like those about her period, we only know about her what the other characters in the book know about her. There is nothing special about her that is not skin-deep, but everything about Fa Mu Lan is special – her heroic nature in taking the place of her dad, her singlehandedly surviving the war, etc. And yet we know less about her – the storytelling is far vaguer than that of “White Tigers.”

Tentative Conclusion:

            Furthermore, the reason why the narrator in “White Tigers” seemed less heroic than the original Fa Mu Lan whom Hong Kingston is developing upon is because of the way Hong Kingston fills in the gaps in the tale. If her intention was to create a more fully fleshed-out character, Hong Kingston only partially succeeds; we are given more information about the character as we watch her transition from childhood to adulthood, and yet this information comes mainly from other characters – we still get very little about the character herself, what she likes, what she wants, etc. What we are given only serves to weaken and dehumanize her. Admittedly, “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” is very vague and one could do a lot with it, so Hong Kingston could’ve easily gone in and made her version the even more likeable, heroic, admirable figure. But she didn’t – she creates a character who is a tool in the aspirations of others. As far as why she does it this way, the clues may lay buried in the Afterword, where Hong Kingston explains how growing up, girls were given no opportunities to do something meaningful. They were looked down upon and objectified. Her culture treats women awfully, and “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” is one of the most deep-rooted parts of her culture. So maybe it is possible that her motive can be summed up in the phrase near the beginning of her narrative “She said I would grow up a wife and a slave, but she taught me the song of the warrior woman, Fa Mu Lan” (Hong Kingston, 20). Maybe Hong Kingston is criticizing the unrealistic story she has been told, how it makes girls of her backgrounds wish for things they can never obtain: heroism, glory, pride. She could be theorizing that the only way Fa Mu Lan could have completed such a feat is if others had gotten her there – an achingly cynical view. We can never know if this was her reason or if it was something else, but nevertheless, she reimagines Fa Mu Lan into someone a lot less heroic. NEED TO WORK ON CONCLUSION.

Letter to Doreen

Dear Doreen,

            To me your center of gravity is that although “White Tigers” is a fan fiction, it should be regarded as a serious text because of the way it empowers and appreciates all girls, even those of us that don’t turn into kickass warrior women. In other words, it is applicable to real life and you can take a lot away from it, so people shouldn’t refuse to take it seriously just because it is fan fiction. I see this as the heart of your piece because of the way you are comparing “White Tigers” to “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” – “The Ballad” and other Mu Lan interpretations are unrealistic and hard to relate to; we cannot find parts of ourselves reflected in those heroines because their lives seem so different from ours. But “White Tigers” is different, it is relatable, as you can see in aspects of Hong Kingston’s narration and in her Afterword comments. Hong Kingston did not pursue a career as a swordswoman, and yet as you point out, she says “The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar.” With her style moves she develops the character into someone with a lot more to her that is not skin-deep, so that we can in fact relate to and learn from her story.

            One of the big ideas that is starting to emerge from your piece is that Hong Kingston expanding upon “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan,” meaning beefing it up a bit/ adding more detail, implants certain lessons into the story that are relatable for everyone. In the original “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan” and in other interpretations a clear moral is hard to find (don’t let your femininity stop you from replacing your dad in war and killing lots of people?) but “White Tigers” uses many themes that are universal, like that you can get anywhere if you practice/train, as we see from the narrator’s brutal training that helps her survive the war. In “The Ballad” she simply goes to war and survives, which would make us think unrealistically that we will be able to reach our goals without working towards them. But “White Tigers” is ultimately delivering the classic “practice makes perfect” idea, and although cliché, it is a valuable life lesson. This is only one of the lessons that Hong Kingston uses her fan fiction style to give to us (we talked about some more of them together in class today). So I see you prodding at some of these themes already, in addition to this idea of Hong Kingston drawing parallels between the narrator’s actions and ours, such as “killing [being like] dancing.”

            A big overarching idea that I see you working towards is how Hong Kingston’s fan fiction style is a much better vehicle for a relatable version of the Mu Lan story than any other, whether it be a song, a Disney movie, etc. So I think you could expand upon that some more – what about Hong Kingston’s fan fiction approach makes it so much more effective? How does it do this? There’s a lot of evidence for your center of gravity that we talked about together today, but what I’d really be interested in seeing is how these parts are unique to this fan fiction style. Could it have something to do with the intimacy of the style – the narrator muddling the plot with her personal information? The way it is told from the first person? And the way the character of the narrator remains nameless might make it more relatable, because we could plug ourselves into the story just how Hong Kingston did – the narrator could essentially be any of us.

            That’s all for now! Let me know if you have any questions or want to talk anything through – your ideas are very rich and fascinating and I think they will make for a great final essay.

Mollie Gordon