Maxine Kumin Essays

Maxine Kumin began publishing her first works in the second half if the 20th century. Of all her works, the narrative about human emotion and nature titled “Woodchucks” stands out among the rest. While normally writing with subtlety regarding her opinions regarding life and nature, in “Woodchucks,” Kumin makes it abundantly clear how she views all life. As a poem, “Woodchucks” clearly illustrates Maxine Kumin’s love for life and nature and her belief that all life holds the same sacredness and

Quietly Justifying Violence Poetry has many ways to express different views on life. Maxine Kumin, poet of “Woodchucks”, seems to be writing about simply trying to keep woodchucks out of her garden. There is the illusion that the poem is not just about getting rid of the woodchucks from the poem but possibly something a bit darker. Maxine Kumin’s poem “Woodchucks” is not just about ridding a garden of woodchucks but more so on the line of justifying the violent behavior in humans. Kumin's poem is

The speaker of Maxine Kumin’s “Woodchucks” begins the poem as passive only describing what everyone is doing, but then transitions to a place of power describing all the things they have personally done. After careful examination of the poem, the poem seems to be about the Holocaust. The speaker describes how “gassing the woodchucks didn’t turn out right.” (Kumin). This then leads to the speaker describing what him and others were doing to the “woodchucks”, the speaker says, “both exits shoehorned

multitude perished. "Woodchucks", a poem by Maxine Kumin, reflects a narrator wanting a pest gone from her garden. The narrator thinks that all the woodchucks accomplish is to cause problems; however, they are most likely not as enormous of a problem as the narrator perceives them to be. When the first, and most humane way, is not executed properly the narrator must find a new way to destroy the woodchucks once and for all. The poem, "Woodchucks", by Maxine Kumin can be interpreted as a person killing

Professions for Women Analysis In Virginia Woolf’s “Profession for Women,” she emphasizes the difficulties women have in the workplace and in daily life in the Victorian Age in which she also grew up in. Growing up Woolf was not given a fair opportunity with her education. While her brothers were sent away to school, she was privately tutored in the comfort of her home. “She later resented the degradation of women in patriarchal society” (Svendson 1); since then, equality between men and women has

Maxine Kumin’s poem Woodchucks delivers the tale of an individual who is killing woodchucks. Although the speaker is unsuccessful with gassing the pests, they resort to utilizing a gun in order to eradicate the woodchucks. A superficial reader might assume that the poem is merely about exterminating woodchucks, but actually it is about the irreversible sadistic nature of human beings. Humans have cruel tendencies and once arisen, are permanent and irrevocable. After switching weapons to a gun

My favorite poem in “Reading, Responding, and Writing” is Maxine Kumin’s “Woodchucks”. This is an intriguing story that starts off with a gardener gassing these innocent woodchucks that are only trying to survive in their home but end up eating his produce in the garden. It escalates very quickly to him becoming obsessed with murdering them until each and everyone is dead. The story is interesting because at first you think nothing of the killings but then he takes it too far and won’t stop, as if

"Imperialism is a policy that aims at building and maintaining an empire, in which many states and peoples, spread over a wide geographical area, are controlled by one dominant state." The idea of Imperialism is fuelled by the desire for economic and political power over other people and nations and this movement was led by European forces such as Great Britain from the 18th - 20th century. The colonisation of Australia, Africa and the Philippines are all examples of Imperialism, and while there

Balancing the Yin and the Yang: Expedition towards Harmony in The Bonesetters Daughter by Amy Tan Asians began immigrating to the United States in 1849. The immigrants from Asia and America of Asian descent have been writing in America since the 19th century. But, Asian American literature as a branch of writing came into being only in the early 1970s. Since then, the field of Asian American literature and of Asian American literary criticism has grown rapidly. The Chinese immigrated to America

Hsiu-chuan Lee discusses the criticism of The Woman Warrior by Maxine Kingston about the use of discursive community crossing the boundaries of genres/disciplines. Lee explains the different genre shifts in the novel to show how the different chapters contains myth, story, and memory as a way to develop different meaning. By analyzing the motif of silence, Lee reveals the Kingston’s intention of breaking the silence imposed by her mother through the various stories and how the silence emphasizes

develops. This is very common in most ethnicities, however in the Chinese tradition it is important to listen and follow these talk-stories as their elders are telling them. In the memoir, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston, Kingston establishes a relationship between silence and finding ones voice through the talk-stories and Chinese traditions she encounters that truly forms her perspective on finding her own identity as a Chinese American. In the beginning

One of the most predominant themes in “The Woman Warrior” is finding ones voice. Throughout the book, voice is referenced many times and most often as a disability of the women in Kingston’s memoirs. Being voiceless is not always a defect that one is born with but can also be due to societal pressures and expectations. The women that appeared as voiceless in the book were most often the ones that did not have an identity of their own. They simply led their lives following someone with a voice hoping

Fitting Into American Culture In the excerpt from The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston reveals the importance of fitting in by retelling the hardships of a 1st generation immigrant in the American school system. Embarrassed by her accent and broken English, Kingston refused to talk in Kindergarten, a problem many 1st generation immigrants have faced. Kingston’s self-esteem was completely based on how her voice sounded, claiming that, “lt spoils my day with self-disgust when I hear my broken voice

Lit Analysis II In The Woman Warrior, Kingston compares Chinese women's voice with American women's voice as a symbolic reference of her constant struggle to find her identity in order to give deeper insight of her continuous conflict due to her battle of pleasing her mother's strict cultural belief and fitting in with America. Kingston is raised in America with parents who are only aware of Chinese lifestyle and not quick to adapt to the American lifestyle. Her mother tells her stories about women

3.2. Criticism on Kingston’s The Woman Warrior Despite the fact that Kingston’s The Woman Warrior was a notable success, many scholars in various academic fields and fellow Chinese American writers heavily criticized her autobiography; its reason is that The Woman Warrior became one of the first canonized works among Chinese American literature (Lowe 76). The heated debates on the categorization of the genre were already presented in the second chapter of this paper. This subchapter however discusses

Analyzing Rhetorical Techniques: "No Name Woman" In her essay "No Name Woman," Maxine Hong Kingston investigates how gender impacts every element of a person's existence in Chinese society. The typical perspective of women's roles in Chinese culture. Through a fictitious affiliation with the female warrior, she shows the poverty and suffering of Chinatown, the entrenched sexism and racism, and the spiritual sorrow of cultural transition under challenging situations. Kingston uses the story of a

The Beautiful Struggle The tragic history of the First Nations community is elegantly translated through Jeanette Armstrong’s “Indian Woman”. The tone in the beginning of the poem embodies the dark and painful history while describing how it affects the current First Nations community. The second half of the poem portrays the empowerment of the First Nations woman as she breaks the stereotypes and begins to believe in herself. Despite the grim past of First Nations people, Armstrong manages to

Native American Essay Skunk Woman is comparable to other Native American myths in terms of characteristics from Native American Literature because in the myth “Coyote finishes his work” it is about a coyote sent to earth to fix it and make it right and to create different people and then putting them in different parts of the world, that is similar to the the myth Skunk Woman because in the myth it speaks about how a man wanted to get a new life and forget about his past because of his bad temper

keep personal information to oneself. In Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir Woman Warrior, Maxine must learn that In a world that values outspoken people, those with different cultural values tend to shy away from others in a negative way, ultimately alienating them from both the community and people around them. Although Maxine is conflicted due to colliding cultures , she is more so confused about her own identity,

focus on the immigration of people to The United States. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, by Maxine Hong Kingston is an example of one of the numerous novels that touch on the experiences that these people have been through. Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko is an example a little different where it shows that the people are sort of being pushed out of their land. Maxine Hong Kingston and Leslie Marmon Silk both use a form of story-telling (talk-story) to tell the stories of their