Shaman

1. Review previous two sections
1. Woman Warrior and no name woman
2. Two female protagonists created by and in relation to Maxine the author
1. Looking for roots and models--ancestors and ghosts; traditions and identity; inheritance and revision
3. Maxine will give unstoried and erased woman a story
1. Maxine is exorcizing or placating ghost of NoNamewoman
4. Maxine will provide a contrary story of woman savior
1. Traditional story of chinese woman--ideal woman of both perfect filiality (45) and overpowering leadership--mother, wife and leader--after saving the nation, comes back and saves family and then joins back into it
1. Transcending limitations--heroic self control and power; self realization
1. Based on vision and endurance and communion with the ancestors and the gods and the myths and ceremonies of the world outside time
2. Giving expression to wrongs
3. Replacing lost male leadership
4. Revenging family and gender wrongs
5. Maxine's ambivalence about the model of Fa Mu Lan
1. Positive role model
1. Gets A's in school
2. Campaigns against injustice--sit-ins and attacks on fatcats
3. She's a warrior avenging wrongs against Chinese Americans with words--pen not sword; "reporting is the vengeance" p. 53
2. Limitations of Fa Mu Lan role model
1. Parents dont accept her achievements
2. Who are the enemies?
3. Violence, martial arts, hate arent any solution
4. Ethnic politics and superstitions arent sustainable
5. Independence and power vs. love and support--China's "Double bind" of female searching for identity
1. Ambivalence and double bind suggest that NoNamewoman and FaMuLan are two sides of Maxines--the passive, suicidal, silent, victim and revenging and the positive
2. Shaman and previous sections
1. Shaman different from general--low status in village; somewhere between outcast and savior; a female rather than male role
1. Ghost Buster, exorcist, Jesus drives out evil spirits
2. Ines--comes with grief and loss of children--la Llorona
3. Loss of husband and children gives shaman access to spirit world
4. Dead children are ghosts--psychological demons; hauntings of suicide, depression, revenge, illnes of all all sort--NoName
5. Shaman negotiates and has special powers and also saves individuals and communities from disaster--spiritual
6. Breakdown of male order in war--especially--or social dislocation of patriarchal family
7. Saving of the father
8. Strength of mother's face vs. father in photographs 58
2. Brave Orchid as Shaman--doctor and witch doctor--both seamlessly combined in china
1. Medicine and exorcism--exorcising demons with spells, rituals, ceremonies, personal courage, psychic powers
2. Ghosts and germs are the same--ancient cures and science 63
3. She too follows bird in calligraphic image to take single journey--across water --leaving family behind, initiatory ordeal 61
4. Goes to place of study--independence; room of her own 62--hard work and excelling performance
5. Scare orgies 65-75
1. Mother is both sceptical 66 and extremely sensitive to them
2. Both a trick on the other girls and a true experience--"Talk Story"
3. Heroic narrative of battle--epic like woman warrior
4. Is this real or not--again the bird of the ideograph [logo between book chapters]--she goes to sleep; could be a dream 68
5. Wrestles with Sitting ghost--wanders in eternity for 10 or twelve years--like John Grimes--also exorcizing spirits cleansing with alcohol and blood 72
6. Sititng ghost takes her back to her babies going to sleep 69--associated with girls in the school 69
6. Also returns as hero--received by the girls in nursing school 72 and later by villagers as hero
1. Advice: dont commit suicide--sound of babies crying
2. Expansion of the idea of ghost to the evil energies in the world 74; Ghost chasers have to be brave
7. She does the same thing with slave girl, whom she tests and then initiates into a female heroic sorority of healing
1. Always dressed elegant and was respected--name Brave Orchid
2. Triumphal procession--buying a slave--the slave market in women--what's beleievable and unbelievable 79
3. Apeman story, monsters, midwifery to cheat the gods
4. Horrendous birth defects--nightmares conveyed to Maxine
3. Healing and spirituality--Melanie's story of about Virgin as model--carry over to Cisneros
1. Read her essay
2. Beads in Woman Warrior--p. 42
3. Saving father in Stockton--he's not strong enough--p.104
3. Break from China to Stockton again; contrast of an ideal and less than ideal in America
1. Transition--tell ghost stories to get chills in hot laundry 87
2. Communist methods of combatting ghost fears--tell more ghost stories 89
3. All heros are bold toward food...big eaters win 90
1. Mother cooking skunk
2. Brutality of monkey feast--nightmares; blood pudding--tough momma 99
3. Story of villagers as refugees--stoning the crazy woman--her mother as hero; more murderous superstititon and scapegoating
4. Maxines nightmares get mixed in
4. Whole world of Ghosts--an alien world--newspaper ghost, milkman ghost etc.97
1. Sense of the foreigness of America to "home" --difference between Maxine and parents 99
5. Shaman's job there--to protect babies from the Ghosts of America--urban renewal, laundry germs
4. Last section
1. Maxine at Mom's--cant sleep hair white 99
1. Maxine haunted by mother's guilt trips
1. Mothers complaints about working--all are workaholics
2. Mother cant sleep in this country
3. Mother accepts America 107, but not dispersion of family
2. Maxines illness and double exorcism--away from mother and city and ghost sounds 108
1. Mother relieves her 108--of course you must go little dog.
5. Brave Orchid as scary--transition to Moon Orchid
1. Looks down on people who are lonely and afraid 67
2. Her face in the pictures
3. Her bargaining for the slave