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"What Stories the Wind Would Tell":
Representation and Appropriation in Maxine
Hong Kingston's China Men
Patricia Linton
UniversityofAlaska,Anchorage
At the end of The WomanWarrior,Maxine Hong Kingston tells the
story of Ts'ai Yen, a poetess born in 175 A.D., who was captured by
barbarians and lived among them for twelve years. Ts'ai Yen made
the yearning notes of the barbarian flutes the basis of her own songs.
The words of these songs seemed to be Chinese, but the barbarians
understood their anger and sadness and thought they could catch
barbarian phrases. One song that she eventually brought back to her
own people was "Eighteen Stanzas for a Barbarian Reed Pipe," a
song that the Chinese now sing to their own instruments. The novel
ends with the comment "It translated well" (209).
But whose song is it? Ts'ai Yen made the barbarian music her own.
The barbarians thought they heard, in an alien language, snatches of
their own experience. The Chinese have adapted to their own instru-
ments music composed for a barbarian pipe. The song is the product
of alienation and exile; it is to some extent the song of the Other. Yet
each culture takes it (mistakes it, appropriates it) for its own.
The story with which Kingston ends The WomanWarrioris a model
for the process of appropriation, which becomes both theme and
method in China Men. At the core of the book (which, like The Woman
Warrior,is a mix of autobiography, fiction, history, and myth) is the
fact of alienation and an effort at reclamation that takes place on two
levels, the individual and the social. The female narrator of China
Men wants to reclaim her father, whose habitual silence is punctuated
with violent curses, directed against women:
What I want from you is for you to tell me that those curses are only com-
mon Chinese sayings. That you did not mean to make me sicken at being
female. "Those were only sayings," I want you to say to me. "I didn't
mean you or your mother. I didn't mean your sisters or grandmothers or
women in general ..." I'll tell you what I suppose from your silences and
few words, and you can tell me that I'm mistaken. You'll just have to
speak up with the real stories if I've got you wrong. (14-15)
MELUS, Volume 19, Number 4 (Winter 1994)
38 PATRICIALINTON
very techniques that the men developed over a hundred years. They
made themselves citizens of this country by telling American ver-
sions of their lives" (Kingston"Imagined"563).The would-be immi-
grants borrowed or forged facsimiles of the papers of China men
who had travelled to America before them; they memorized and re-
told the stories immigration officials would accept. Kingston asserts
that the world of ChinaMen is "anon-fictionworld because I actually
heard people tell its stories with fervor.I feel as if I have direct con-
tact with that non-fiction world's energy source"(Thompson4). But
she acknowledges that she "translat[es]from inside the people she
[writes]about"(Kim92). She borrowsmyths and adapts Chinese folk
legends to create American stories. As Linda Ching Sledge notes:
"These are not definitive, 'pure' myths in the textual sense but are
consciously contrived literary imitations that may be ironic ana-
logues of western tales or variations of folk tales" (7). In short,
Kingston'snarrativeappropriatesthe lives of real people, the facts of
history, the tales of another culture, and makes them tell the Ameri-
can story she needs to hear.
The term "appropriation"has a negative cast: it suggests acquisi-
tiveness, manipulation. Not all readers have been willing to license
Kingston's strategies, whatever their social objectives.Because both
TheWomanWarriorand ChinaMenwere published as non-fiction,the
question of genre has been raised repeatedly (see, for example,
Sledge 3-4 and Wu 85-86).If these stories are not fiction,they may of-
fer glimpses of the personal lives of real people. Some of Kingston's
relatives have been disturbed by her revealing "family secrets"
(Yalom14). ElaineH. Kim notes that because of her status as a canon-
ized author, Kingston's writing has become "a crucible for Asian
American issues" (79). Some male Asian American writers, notably
FrankChin, have challenged the feminist content of her work, refer-
ring to her as a "yellow agent of stereotype"who "falsifies Chinese
history" and "vilifies Chinese manhood" (1989 lecture qtd. in Kim
76). Chin argues that it is importantfor issues of gender to be subor-
dinated to racialand ethnic concerns:
Noting that "white people never did have the eyes to see through
fake,"Chin has called for "harshand knowledgeable"Asian American
critics to "police the differencebetween the real and the fake" in the
name of preserving Asian American cultural integrity. He accuses
Amy Tanand MaxineHong Kingstonof exaggeratingChinese patriar-
chal attitudes and practices by deliberately misrepresentingChinese
history and legends, the "racist"effect of which is to reinforcethe no-
tion that Chinese society is more misogynistic than and thereforeinfe-
rior to Westerncivilization. (Kim77)
40 PATRICIALINTON
A howling like wolves, like singing, came rising out of the island....
It was, I know it, the island, the voice of the island singing, the sirens
Odysseus heard.... The land sings. Weheard something.It'sa tributeto
the pioneers to have a living island named aftertheirwork hat.
I have heard the land sing. I have seen the bright blue streaks of
spirits whisking throughthe air.I again searchfor my Americanances-
tors by listening in the cane. (90)
The speaking of the land itself (along with the narrative voice that
recounts the tale) has redeemed the offensive name of the island-it
is no longer a racist slur but a tribute. Retelling provides a way to
change received meaning, to force the slippage of the signifier.
Bakhtin asserts: "It is naive to suppose that one can assimilate as
one's own an external speech that runs counter to one's inner speech,
that is, runs counter to one's whole inner verbal manner of being
aware of oneself and the world" (408). Nevertheless, what one can do
is to appropriate external speech, the discourse of the Other, and alter
its significance.
Bak Goong, the great grandfather, is gifted with language; he has a
good ear for alien dialects and even for barbarian speech. "If anyone
talked long enough in a foreign language and he heard enough, he
understood" (113). Therefore, the rule that the Chinese laborers can-
not speak while working on the plantations is especially onerous to
him: "How was he to marvel adequately, voiceless? He needed to
cast his voice out to catch ideas.... He suddenly had all kinds of
things to say" (100). He attempts in a variety of ways to subvert the
oppressive control exerted by the white overseers: he tries ignoring
the ban and is fined; he tries singing his comments and is whipped.
Finally he learns to use his coughing to expel what is inside him:
When the demons howled to work faster,faster,he coughed in reply.
The deep, long, loud coughs, barking and wheezing, were almost as
satisfying as shouting. He let out scolds disguised as coughs.... All
Chinese words conveniently a syllable each, he said "Get-that-
horse-dust-away-from-me-you-dead-white-demon.
Don't-stare-at-me-with-those-glass-eyes. I-can't-take-
this-life." He felt betterafterhaving his say.He did not even mind the
despair,which dispelled upon his speakingit. (104)
Bak Goong learns to curse in coughs; he becomes a talk addict
(110). He supports the other men with his talk story, adapting a folk
tale about an ancient Chinese trickster in order to make fun of the
missionary ladies who speak "well-intoned" but "disincarnated"
Cantonese, peeking in their little black phrase books to see what to
REPRESENTATIONAND APPROPRIATIONIN CHINAMEN 45
say next. Eventually, when all the men become weakened and
fevered, he diagnoses their illness: "Itis a congestion from not talk-
ing. What we have to do is talk and talk"(115).
The account of Bak Goong culminates in a complex and powerful
metaphor that demonstrates how people appropriate the land, mak-
ing it so completely their own that the land itself tells their story. He
"talked an apt story to the silenced men, who had heard it already in
the long ago place where there had been mothers and children" (116).
The story concerns a king with a secret-his son has cat's ears. Years
go by, and when the king cannot contain his secret any more, he
shouts it into a hole in the ground, buries it. But when the grass
grows over the spot and the wind blows through it, the wind carries
the words in a song and everybody hears it. The day after Bak Goong
has reminded them of this tale, the China men plow a circle in the
ground:
"Theythrew down their tools and flopped on the ground with their
faces over the edge of the hole and theirlegs like wheel spokes.... They
had dug an ear into the world, and were telling the earththeir secrets.
"I want home," Bak Goong yelled, pressed against the soil, and
smelling the earth."Iwant my home,"the men yelled together."Iwant
home. Home. Home. Home. Home."
Talkedout, they buried their words, planted them.... Soon the new
green shoots would rise, and when in two years the cane grew gold
tassels, what stories the wind would tell. (117-18)
Just as the wind blowing through the field where the king had plant-
ed his secret spread the news throughout the land, the wind blowing
through the sugarcane will carry the words of the China men. Once the
men have planted their secrets and their longings in the Hawaiian soil,
they have made it theirs; eventually it will tell their own stories. They
have become American forefathers. "That wasn't a custom," com-
ments Bak Goong. "We made it up. We can make up customs because
we're the founding ancestors of this place" (118). The assertiveness of
the men is effective: the demons seem to be intimidated by their be-
havior. It emancipates Bak Goong and perhaps the other men as well
from some of the most insulting work rules: "Fromthe day of the shout
party, Bak Goong talked and sang at his work, and did not get sent to
the punishment fields. In cutting season, the demons no longer accom-
panied the knife-wielding China Men into deep cane" (118).
Much of what the men have to say when they shout into the hole
in the ground has to do with women-not only the women they left
behind but also the women they have encountered in the new land:
46 PATRICIALINTON
those who have truly appropriated the land are those who have
planted their stories in it. By representingthe China men who were
"thebinding and building ancestorsof this place,"Kingstonchanges
the meaning of their stories. She appropriatesthe land in their name.
"Soon the new green shoots would rise, and when in two years the
cane grew gold tassels, what stories the wind would tell."
Notes
1. This is a point Kingston makes frequently in interviews (see also Chin 63 and
Thompson 10).
2. "Gold Mountain Heroes" was Kingston's preferred title. China Men was her
editor's selection. "Gold Mountain Heroes" appears in Chinese on the cover
and on the first page of each chapter (Sledge 22).
3. Kingston explicitly rejects the notion of being a representative Chinese-Ameri-
can or of speaking in the name of all Chinese-Americans. She makes this point
in almost every interview. For example:
I understand what happens. I met some readers who get so offended when
a white friend of theirs says, "Oh, I just read ChinaMen, and now I under-
stand you!" Nobody wants that. And then a lot of Chinese Americans get
mad, because they say my experience is nothing like theirs.... There aren't
enough books out there. If there were lots of books, then you could see the
variety of people in the books, reflecting the variety of people in life. But
since there aren't a whole lot of books ... (Chin 68; see also Yalom 12).
Because, as Kingston implies, there are not many books that address the expe-
riences of Chinese-Americans, both Chinese-Americans and other Americans
often read her as speaking for the whole community.
4. Kingston has said, "All the mythology in China Men is from what the Chinese
call the small tradition, not the great literary traditions, but those of lower class
people. When I write, I think of them in the language of the peasants of one
particular village, and that language has not been written down. I write about
illiterate people whose language has not even been Romanized. So it's a matter
of starting with a language that has no writing and yet writing about people
who talk-story in that language" (Yalom 12-13).
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