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It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. In a time of destruction, create something. Maxine Hong Kingston. Hey there, welcome back to Tweed Trends.
Keeping up with our Women's History Month and the women who are telling stories. I ran across an author. She's a Chinese-American and her story sounds a lot like some of the stories that you would hear from African-American authors. This woman, her name is Maxine Hong Kingston.
And one of her most notable books is titled The Woman Warrior. And immediately when I heard the name of this book, it made me think of Viola Davis and The Woman King. And how Viola Davis received a lot of negative press about The Woman King from multiple people within the Black community because they felt like they were trying to say something like putting woman and king in the same sentence was just not acceptable. And I bring this up because in Maxine's book, The Woman Warrior, she, the way she describes her style of writing is almost like it's on the fence.
It's not fiction and it's not nonfiction. And the way she describes how that whole thing comes together is that her mother told her some stories about, one in particular about her father's sister. And the story that the mother told about this no-name woman, it was a true story, but it was an incomplete story. So the way Maxine went about retelling the story, although her mother told her not to ever repeat the story, it was to then fill in the pieces of the story with parts that basically came from imagination.
She even says in an interview that when she wrote this book, she hadn't been to China yet and it was decades after that when she went and to her surprise, the things that she imagined about the places and different things that you could physically see when she went to China, those were the things that she saw. And so in her mind, it was almost like she created those things because she had no idea that they were there. She just imagined that it was probably like this and then to get there and see that for her was absolutely amazing. Going back to the part that I mentioned before where the Woman King was criticized from within the black community, the same thing has happened to Maxine for the Chinese community that people within that community have criticized her work, basically saying that she embellished the bad sides, the bad parts, and that things weren't quite as bad as she made them sound.
However, when you listen to Maxine talk about this book in particular, she's saying that she's telling stories from her family. So I find it very interesting that someone's going to try to tell her what was and was not her story. And again, that sounds like one of those type of situations where African Americans are told that, oh, it can't be that bad or there's no way that that happened. When it's your truth, it's your truth.
You know, you can't tell me that I didn't experience that or that I didn't live it or that I shouldn't have perceived it that way because I'm looking through my personal lens and unless you were there to see it happen, to experience it, then you can't tell me that that's not what happened. And so in some of the interviews that Maxine has done, she's kind of broken that down and she said that I didn't write these stories to speak for all Chinese people or all Chinese Americans. I told these stories because they were my stories and I can't fault her for that. Last but not least, I want to talk about the fact that there was a gentleman that I was watching his interview about the books that Maxine has written and he drew a parallel of Maxine and Toni Morrison.
And what he was basically saying is that there's a sad truth as to why these women don't get the full notoriety that they deserve. And that thing is the fact that they believe in ghosts. In their books, they write of ghosts and the people that are handing out these awards in the literary circles, they don't believe in ghosts. And because of that, the stories don't resonate with them.
They can't grasp the concept. It doesn't make sense to them and therefore their works won't be the ones that they select to receive these high honors. And I think that's really sad because I just think that's really sad. But it's true.
It's true on so many levels and not just literary, but we can take the same discussion to movies. And once again, not to take away from Maxine, but to compare this to the Black community, you have Black directors, you have Black movies out there, predominantly Black cast. Well, in these stories and these story lines, a lot of times they're things from the community. And if you're not from the community, you may not understand what is being said.
You might not catch all of the jokes. You might not be able to even partially empathize with the characters if you don't understand the storyline, if you just can't even relate. And therefore, those movies don't get the nods for the big awards, which is why we've had to make our own awards programs. I mean, sometimes it's a necessary thing to do just so that your people can feel appreciated.
Nobody wants to run around doing all the things and get no type of recognition for it. So that's what we've done in the Black community. I have no idea if Asians have the same thing, if they have their own awards programs. But I imagine though, that Maxine Hong Kingston might not get the nod then either because of the way that many Chinese feel that she has altered the story so much that they don't even agree with it.
So it's a tough place to be in. But like she said, she has these stories within her and her goal, her desire, especially in the woman warrior book, her goal was to take the story of her deceased aunt and to give her life again and to give her life meaning and to almost say give her a second chance. And I think that's pretty cool. Thank you for joining me for today's episode.
Do me a favor, check out Maxine's work and let me know what you think. You know where to find me, Twitter, and Instagram at hevevevevevet. That's at hevevevet. Or just look for the hashtag tweet trends.
Have a great weekend and I look forward to seeing you back here again on Tuesday.