Iniguez 1

Andy Iniguez
Writing 39B
L. Kaminski
07 May 2015
Rhetorical Analysis
In Nicoleta A. Zaganis interview with Hong Kingston, the author of The Woman
Warrior, Kingston illustrates, When I'm writing, I imagine a large audience that is people from
throughout space and time. I feel that I am addressing people of the future, and also people of the
world (Zagani 98). In The Woman Warrior Hong Kingston seems to address those of ChineseAmerican decent as well as women, however I believe she is targeting a larger audience like she
purposes in her quote during her interview. In Cousers Article, Memoir, he states, we write
our liveshere for a familiar audience at a milestone in our lives (Couser 31). Couser illustrates
how personal writings such as, Memoirs, are used to target a similar audience that one can relate
too through their more important or devastating times of their lives. Hong Kingstons memoir,
The Woman Warrior, is a personal reflection of Kingstons life that she portrays through the
stories of others in her life such as, her aunts and mothers, to target most woman and Chinese
American as her audience. However, I believe that Kingston tries to target more than just those
specific targets as well. Kingston uses rhetorical devices such as appealing to ones emotion,
establishing credibility, and symbolism to illustrate the relation from her personal writings to
show the importance of an audience to convey the messages of her stories.
Kingston introduces his audience in The Woman Warrior to be Chinese Americans and
Women who have been discriminated against and oppressed, but I believe they are not the only

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audience Kingston plans to attract. Kingstons memoir she seems to target these Chinese
Americans and Women in her story because she is able to relate to them through her stories. For
instance, when she sates, And I have so many words"chink" words and "gook" words too
that they do not fit on my skin. (Kingston 53). This quote illustrates how Kingston relates
towards Chinese-Americans who have been discriminated against by derogatory terms even by
some that may not relate to her, such as gook which is a derogatory term for a Korean, not
Chinese. Although, it may seem as if Kingston is targeting a specific audience throughout her
novel I believe she is trying to catch the attention of any reader who comes across her work, even
if they are not Chinese or a Woman. The other audience I am portraying read her memoir without
actually knowing what she is going through, but with her elaborate details they can feel
sympathy for her or feel happy for her, as one would when they watch a TV show and get
hooked on a character. Couser who is a credible author who wrote the book, Memoir, in which he
states, We can understand memoir fully only if we see it as merely one of a large and ever
expanding set of practices of people employ to represent actual lives, their own and others
(Couser 24). This helps portray what Kingston does in her memoir when she uses the short
stories of other and herself for the purpose of relating to her audiences actual lives, but I feel
that Kingston changes things up by aiming to attract not only those she can relate to, but also
those who cant.
However, relating to ones audience is still half the battle when it comes to catching their
attention or get them continue reading an author still has to give them a purpose. In most
memoirs the purpose of relating to ones audience is to teach them a lesson and portray how one
can solve their problem through a credible source like Kingston herself. As for the audience who
doesnt relate to the author they too can learn a lesson from Kingstons work, but the lesson they

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learn is different from that of those who can relate to Kingston. For example, when Kingston
states, Some Negro kids walked me to school and home, protecting me from the Japanese kids,
who hit me and chased me and stuck gum in my ears (Kingston 166). This illustrates how
Kingston tries to relate to a Chinese audience who have bullied as she has and illustrate that
everyone discriminates as the Japanese did to her. These African-American who protected her
portray overcoming racial differences, which I believe is the message for those who cant relate
to Kingston and other Chinese minorities. This is where rhetoric takes place in Kingstons
memoir, as written by Lian Jian and Zhang Lijun in their research article, Rhetorical Appeal
Based Writing Model, rhetorical appeals should be considered through three aspects, namely,
message aspect, audience aspect and writers aspect. But in practical writing, the three often
mingle together and influence each other (Lijun 619). This article illustrate how rhetoric works
and the bases of it come from the audience itself. Without an audience there is no point in
writing, even if youre writing to yourself your audience is still you. Kingston integrates these
ideas of rhetoric in her memoir by giving her audience a reason to read her personal writing in
hopes that it will help them resolves their own issues or even fix greater worldwide issues when
targeting a larger audience of those who cant relate to her as well.
As mentioned before Kingston integrates in to her memoir the use of credibility and call
to emotion to relate her audience through her own personal writings and experience. As stated in
previous paragraphs it seems as if Kingstons targeted audience are Chinese Americans and
Women, which she can relate to herself and giver her credibility because she can illustrate to her
audience that she has gone through similar experiences. As for her audience that she cant relate
to she connects with them through emotion by showing them what people like her have gone
through and have them feel sympathy towards them. An example of Kingston relating to her

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audience is when she states, Your aunt gave birth in the pigsty that night I found her and the
baby plugging up the family well Now that you have started menstruate, what happen to her
can happen to you. Dont humiliate us. You wouldnt like to be forgotten as if you had never
been born (Kingston 5). This helps illustrate how Kingston appeals to her audience by relating
to what most young girls go through with their parents by expressing herself through her own
experience to show that they are not alone. As for people who cant relate to this, like men, she
tries to make them feel sympathy towards Kingston and others who had to go through the same
experience because of the pressure put on them to not be forgotten as if you had never been
born. This portrays how well Kingston is able to integrate rhetoric devices into her memoir in a
way to relate to her audience through her own personal writings. Its almost like reverse
psychology of some sort because us as readers we tend to fill sympathy for what Kingston had to
go through, but at the same time she is showing us those who are going through the same thing
as her and wants us to feel sympathy for them. This is how Kingston uses the rhetoric skills of
appealing to her audiences emotion and illustrating her credibility from her experiences to attach
the readers to her story to convey the message she wants to send out to the different types of
audiences.
Kingstons integration of rhetoric in her memoir isnt only used to relate to her audience,
but also to give them a better understanding of what she went through herself. Kingston uses
various examples of symbolism throughout her memoir to paint a bigger picture for her readers
to understand her experiences. However, she also uses symbolism to relate to her audience in a
certain way she does this by symbolizing things she went through to relate to things her audience
can understand. For instance, throughout all her stories she symbolizes the women in her family
to what she sees them as such as, her aunts No Name Warrior and Moon Orchid, and her mom,

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Brave Orchid. The symbolism in Kingstons story relates to rhetoric by illustrating to her
audience by showing how Kingston saw her family members by comparing them to things
people will probably understand better. The audience then understands how Kingston feels about
her family, which helps portray the moral and the relation to the stories for the audience. Another
example of symbolism is Kingstons memoir is when she tells the story of Tsai Yen and says,
After twelve years among the Southern Hsiung-nu, Ts'ai Yen was ransomed and married to
Tung Su so that her father would have Han descendants. She brought her songs back from the
savage lands, and one of the three that has been passed down to us is "Eighteen Stanzas for a
Barbarian Reed Pipe," a song that Chinese sing to their own instruments. It translated well
(Kingston 209). The story of Tsai is a symbolic story, which is used to relate to Kingston herself
and tell her own life story through the story of someone else. This use of symbolism helps us
understand Kingston more from a different point of view, which helps certain readers relate to
her more and helps other readers understand her more. It is not difficult for Kingston to
symbolize her stories with those of others because according to Couser Memoirs are meant to
relate to the real world when he says, memoir is more firmly rooted in the real world, life as
we know it (Couser 48). This source helps show how well Kingston is able to integrate
symbolism into her memoir to help relate to her audience and give them a better understanding
of what she is trying to get through to them.
In conclusion, the memoir The Woman Warrior uses various rhetorical devises in order to
connect to the audience by relating to them and teaching them a valuable lesson through the
authors credible techniques. Kington appeals to the audiences emotions by telling stories they
can relate to and compare to their own lives and realize they arent the only ones. Kingston does
this by using her credible skills as a writer and applying other rhetoric devices such as,

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symbolism. Furthermore, the memoir gives Kingstons point of view of her own life through her
personal writing, which make it seem to be not a great life, but she makes the best out of it and
wants her writers to do the same. Through the use of rhetorical techniques Kingston was able to
write a memoir that not only should have satisfied her targeted audience, but also other who may
not have been able to relate can understand the lesson and apply it to their own lives.

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Work Cited
Couser, G. Thomas, Nov 04, 2011, Memoir: An Introduction. Oxford University Press, USA,
Oxford. Print.
Kingston, H. Maxine. The Woman Warrior. New York: Random House, Inc., 1976. Print.
Li, Jian, and Lijun Zhang. Rhetoric Appeal based Writing Model. Literature 1 May. 2014: 61720. EBSCO Host. Web. 5 May. 2015.
Zagni, A. Nicoleta. An Interview with Maxine Hong Kingston. Editions Belin Dec. 2006: 97106. JSTOR. Web. 5 May. 2015.