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