Introduction

Silence as imposed invisibility runs deep in the works of Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan, as minority women writers. On one hand, both Kingston and Tan are American-born Chinese Americans, so unlike their parents, they are often caught in bewilderment between two cultures and two worlds. Living in a bi/multi-cultural American world, the Chinese American-born (or ABC) “daughters” are expected to speak in a “standard” form of English and to “succeed”. On the other hand, minority women are often outsiders in America, excluded from the mainstream and racial power centers. And some women are muted because of sexism, racism and “tonguelessness” that results from prohibition or language barriers. Kingston and Tan are perhaps the most representative and influential Chinese-American women writers, and they have many similar features concerning their works. For instance, the silence of Chinese/Chinese American girls and women caused by the conflicts of gender, race and culture is a common theme in Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976) and Tan’s The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991). However, most studies on the works of both writers focus on matrilineal tradition (Lindenmeyer, 2001; Bhattacharya, 2019), reflection on their relationship to their ancestral homelands/immigration and identity (Wai-sum, 2008; Chandra, 2009), and the intersection of oceanic, mobility and Chinese American studies (Poppenhagen, 2023).

By focusing on the theme of silence and revealing gender, racial and cultural conflicts behind the silence, I want to contend that silence is articulate in its own way, for it betrays the hidden conflicts behind it. However, as a pent-up force, it sometimes results in misunderstanding, conflicts, madness or even death. Breaking the silence and communicating with each other are the best way out. To solve the conflicts, constructing subjectivity and intersubjectivity is also needed. Relying on Jessica Benjamin’s theory on intersubjectivity, this paper asserts that equal and successful communication between genders, races and cultures can be achieved through the construction of intersubjectivity. The idea of intersubjectivity is important and useful in both philosophy and psychoanalysis, because it deals with the problem of defining the other as object. While subjectivity represents “the achievement of autonomy”, “freedom from others” (Kellond, 2022, p.73), intersubjectivity is “the field of intersection between two subjectivities, the interplay between two different subjective worlds” (Benjamin, 1990, p.34). The logic of subject and object enjoys plausibility in Western philosophy and science, and intersubjectivity was formulated in contrast to it. As Jessica Benjamin puts it, intersubjectivity refers to “the zone of experience or theory in which the other is not merely the object of the ego’s need/drive or cognition/perception, but has a separate and equivalent center of self” (1990, p.35).

The Articulate but Stifling Silence

Chinese history, to some extent, reflects the usurpation on the part of men towards women, taking the establishment of an absolute tyranny over women as the direct object. Misogyny and sexism lead to the conflicts between two genders: the conflict between the wife and the husband; the conflict between women as individuals and the patriarchal family; the conflict between women and the society which represents the interests of men. In the feudal and patriarchal society, if the conflicts can’t be solved, the weak and underprivileged women always lapse into silence. Silence is related with trauma and secret, as Elke D’Hoker (2023) argues that the project of giving voice to the marginalised and suppressed often involves addressing topics, which patriarchal society has long outlawed as taboo (p.96). The silencing of women strikes a chord when we look at the characters in The Woman Warrior and The Kitchen Gods Wife, whose voicelessness is induced by gender. In The Woman Warrior, the narrator’s father and mother’s silence about and prohibition of the mention of the no-name aunt are reflections of the ideology of the patriarchal world; the silence of no-name aunt about the rape or love affair that leads to her pregnancy shows her helplessness but also resistance in the patriarchal world; the silence of weak Moon Orchid suggests her fear of and submissiveness to her former husband. In The Kitchen God’s Wife, Winnie’s secret about her past and her silence about her husband’s wrong doings show her contempt and disillusionment of the whole patriarchal society.

The racial features render Chinese Americans immediately visible because of their difference with Caucasians, but meanwhile, “paradoxically, render them invisible, in the metaphoric sense that Ralph Ellison used in his novel, The Invisible Man,” for at certain times in history, “the racial minority person in the United States has been a nonperson----politically, legally, and socially----and these traditions also die hard” (Ling, 1990, p.20). The conflict between races is revealed in the silence of the narrator and other Chinese-American girls in American schools, and in the whisper of the narrator before the bosses who are racists in The Woman Warrior. The silence and whisper reflect their fear and uncertainty of the world dominated by white Americans.

Culture is everywhere, like a teacher who teaches us how to dress, what to eat, what to worship and what to despise. It is the cultivation, internalization and practice of a code of manners, shared by a group of people. The obstruction in the communication between the narrator and her mother in The Woman Warrior and the silence between Winnie and her daughter, Pearl in The Kitchen God’s Wife are not only a problem of generation gap, but more importantly, the great differences between two cultures: mother represents Chinese culture while daughter the American one. Pearl and her American husband’s breakdown in communication when speaking of Chinese filial duty, also reveals the conflict between two cultures.

Therefore, silence is articulate, and it does not mean nothing is said. As Samovar and Porter (1991) observe, “Like olfactory and tactile cues, silence cues transcend the verbal channel, often revealing what speech conceals” (p. 224). Therefore, silence is the silence that speaks. It is a pent-up force, and this kind of force has its own strength, which communicates to people what the silence means. As Debora Tannen (1985) points out, “Silence is the extreme manifestation of indirectness. If indirectness is a matter of saying one thing and meaning another, silence can be a matter of saying nothing and meaning something” (p. 97). However, for women in the two books, silence is depressing and stifling. Silence is part of the reason that leads to the death of no-name aunt, the madness of Moon Orchid, self-contempt and self-hatred of the narrator in The Woman Warrior. And the American schoolteachers perceive the narrator’s silence as ineptitude. In The Kitchen God’s Wife, Winnie’s silence only makes her husband, Wenfu more savage to her. The mother is estranged from her daughter, for the silence between them deepens their misunderstanding and hurts each other.

Many researchers have presented researches of meanings and functions of silence from the cross-cultural perspective and their studies demonstrate that silence can be associated with conflict or negative emotion: Tannen (1985) suggests that of the components of a conversational style she characterizes as “high involvement” can be understood as ways of avoiding silence in casual conversation, since silence, for those speakers, is seen as evidence of lack of rapport (pp. 93-101). Ron Scollon (1985) indicates that silence is often regarded negatively, metaphorically seen as a mechanical breakdown of “a machine that should hum steadily along” ---- “The normal state of the machine is thought of as a steady hum or buzz, with hesitation or silences indicating trouble, difficulty, missing cogs, and so forth” (pp. 21-29). Though she champions the virtues of silence, King-Kok Cheung (1993) also admits that silence, like language, has many ugly faces; the undesirable silences include “the speechlessness induced by shame and guilt, the oppressive or protective withholding of words in the family, or the glaring oversight in official history” (p. 20). So, silence can not only cause cross-cultural misunderstanding, but also make a person become unnoticed or invisible to others. To a certain degree, one’s voice proves the existence of oneself. In this sense, the silent person is like one who has disappeared and doesn’t exist in the world. As a pent-up and depressive force, silence destroys women’s self-respect, self-confidence and courage in existence. Their silence is not only the disappearance of language, but also the vanishing, invisibility and denigration of themselves.

Shattering of silence

Since it is stifling, pernicious and destructive for women in the two books, silence has to be broken and shattered. The constraint and depression of silence can make human nature become deformed. Only by shattering silence, can the destructive force of silence disappear, the depressed human nature be liberated and harmonious relationship be possibly constructed. Though sometimes when silence gives way to verbal expression, confrontation will be met and the conflicts will erupt with everlastingly destructive results, keeping silent can only avoid the conflict temporarily and it can’t clear up misunderstandings or solve conflicts. Using silence as a substitute for direct expression of negative emotion in a conflict situation can’t solve the problem, and it is only the symbol of weakness and escapism.

In The Woman Warrior, the narrator is aware of the invisibility caused by silence, as she says, “If you don’t talk, you can’t have a personality…. Nobody’s going to notice you” (Kingston, 1989, pp. 180-81). And at the same time, the narrator’s mother, Brave Orchid is very clever to be aware of the harm of the inability to speak the second language and incapacity of a self-expression in the competitive America. Though she remembers the old Chinese saying----“a ready tongue is an evil,” she knows that “[t]hings are different in this ghost country [America]” (Kingston, 1989, p. 164). She cut her daughter’s tight frenum so that she “would not be tongue-tied;” her tongue “would be able to move in any language;” she’ll be able to “speak languages that are completely different from one another” and “pronounce anything” (Kingston, 1989, p.164). Having accumulated “a list of over 200 items about herself” that she needed to confess to her mother “so that she would know the true things” about her and “to stop the pain” in her throat”, the narrator in The Woman Warrior eventually finds her voice (Kingston, 1989, p. 197). Ts’ai Yen’s singing to the barbarian pipe communicates her sadness and anger to the barbarians and touches her half-barbarian children. In The Kitchen God’s Wife, Winnie breaks silence and tells her father and friends her unhappy marriage. With the encouragement from her female friends, she flees from the control of Wenfu, and gains her happy life. Her telling of her past to Pearl and the communication between them, clear up the misunderstanding between mother and daughter. For daughters like Kingston and Tan, writing about the past and the present of their immigrant parents and themselves and making Chinese American women’s voice heard by the world become a powerful way to testify the existence of them and to negotiate and recreate their identity as Chinese Americans.

The limitation of voices

Reticence doesn’t characterize all the Chinese. Within the two books, Brave Orchid in The Woman Warrior is a “champion talker” (Kingston, 1989, p. 202); Fa Mu Lan is a brave warrior that can let her voice out; Helen Kwong in The Kitchen God’s Wife is very talkative. However, as women, they themselves are influenced by the misogynic thoughts. To different degrees, the articulate women have internalized the ideology that discriminates and under-values women. Sometimes they take the side of the powerful male and represent the ideology of the patriarchal society. The conflicts of gender, race and culture can’t be solved only by owning voices. Speech or telling stories is essential to women’s quest for spiritual insight into the self, but it is not enough.

Brave Orchid is an eloquent type who always teaches her children by telling stories; however, her teaching cannot help her daughter to free herself from the obsession of silence. Her upbringing and her experience have taught her to be submissive to men or to demand her rights within the patriarchal framework constructed to contain women. She is unconsciously influenced by the misogynic thoughts of patriarchal society, and her requests and demands of her daughter sometimes reflect the ideology of patriarchal society. For example, in the first chapter “No Name Woman”, she helps her family’s punishment of the no-name-aunt by requiring her daughter, “Don’t tell anyone you had an aunt. Your father does not want to hear her name. She has never been born.” (Kingston, 1989, p. 15) And she tells the story of the no-name woman only to warn the narrator about sex; in the second chapter “White Tiger”, she lets the narrator know that there are so many misogynic proverbs in the Chinese culture, for example, “There’s no profit in raising girls. Better to raise geese than girls” (Kingston, 1989, p.46). In the third chapter, she can’t understand why she paid two hundred dollars for bearing the narrator in America while during the war, “many people gave older girls away for free” (Kingston, 1989, p. 83).

Fa Mu Lan is the imaginative representation of the super-woman that the narrator wishes to emulate. However, the woman warrior can exercise her power only when she disguises herself; on changing back into a woman she must once more be obedient to her parents-in-law and resume her son-bearing function. “Now my public duties are finished,” she says to them, “I will stay with you, doing farmwork and housework, and giving you more sons” (Kingston, 1989, p. 45).

Helen Kwong (Hulan) in The Kitchen God’s Wife is a person that “chattered like a noisy bird” and complains to and scolds her husband freely (Tan, 1991, p.178). However, when Winnie was slapped and ordered to kneel down by Wen Fu in the face of her, her husband and other colleagues and friends, she not only kept silent and did not try to stop his cruel action but also helped him by pushing Winnie to kneel down and urging her to be obedient: “ ‘Kneel down, kneel down,’ she cried. … ‘Just listen to him. Say you are sorry, what does it matter?’” (Tan, 1991, p. 252). Perhaps Helen thinks that if Winnie does what Wen Fu orders her to do, he will be less angry, but the words said by her reflects the influence of the misogynic thoughts on her. Like most people in the misogynic old China, Helen feels that kneeling down before one’s husband is not unusual, at least not a serious thing for a wife to do, for the feudal doctrine tells people that a wife has no dignity or self-respect before her husband since she belongs to him just like his property.

For the three women above, the misogynic ideology of patriarchal society becomes a part of their consciousness, with or without their being aware of the “internalization”. It seems that Brave Orchid owns subjectivity for she sustains her strong personality and individuality even in the hard America. However, her “subjectivity” is limited, for a lot of things that she says to her daughter reflect the self-depreciation, self-rejection and self-obliteration as a woman. Giti Chandra (2009) confirms the same view, “on one hand, she (Brave Orchid) is the young rebel who defies convention, while on the other hand, this is the mother who instills in her daughter the fear that unless she did something big and fine, her parents would sell her when they went back to China” (pp.73-74). In order to achieve an equal and successful communication with men, the white, and the people from other cultures, women need to recognize and acknowledge themselves. Therefore, female subjectivity must be constructed to solve the gender, racial and cultural conflicts that are reflected in the two books. Owning voice is the first step toward the acquiring of the sense of self, and what is more important for solving the conflicts is the construction of female subjectivity.

The construction of female subjectivity

The notion of the “subject” has been studied for long in philosophy and has proved crucial to the Post-Structuralist enterprise. For Descartes, the self is a non-physical substance whose whole essence is to think. The concept of “subject” can also be traced in most varieties of Post-Structuralism. For post-Structuralists, the subject is constructed in language and discourse and it isn’t fixed and unified, but split, unstable or fragmented, never an indivisible unity, never an autonomous, self-determining center of consciousness. According to Judith Butler (1987), subject’s desire is linked with self-knowledge, is “the desire-for-reflection”, “a reflective structure”, and the movement (consciousness’ reflexivity) out of itself is necessary in order for it to know itself (pp.7-8). And Butler (1987) also argues, “Importantly, the Hegelian subject is not a self-identical subject who travels smugly from one ontological place to another; it is its travels, and is every place in which it finds itself.” (p.8).

In her book, An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism, Madan Sarup (1993) provides accounts of female subjectivity by three French thinkers: Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva (pp. 109-128). In Cixous’ view, the dialectical structures of the opposition between man and woman predominate the formation of subjectivity, and thus of sexual difference. She points out the limitations and dangers of dualist thought, of subjectivity based on the Other, and advocates positing of alternative relations to otherness. For Irigaray, the culture of the West is of men; the status of women is that of “lesser men”, inferior men. She emphasizes women-as-subject and believes that occupying the subject position must be rooted in social practice, and women must participate in the formation of cultural and political realities. Similar to Irigaray, Kristeva is always aware of the historical and social aspects of subjectivity .

American feminist and psychologist, Jessica Benjamin (1988) believes that men get the experience of subjectivity from their desirable objects----women, while women must get it from self-discovery. According to her, many adolescent women or even adult women are preoccupied with solitude, or their inner space, which is important for self-discovery for it allows the self to experience desire as truly inner (Benjamin, 1988, p. 128). And Donna Bassin also argues that “woman’s inner space provides a metaphor of equal importance” to “phallic activity and its representations, which serve as structures of knowing and creating the world” (cited in Benjamin, 1986, p. 96).

In Diving Deep and Surfacing, Carol P. Christ (1995) gives a clear illustration of women’s “social quest” and “spiritual quest” and the relationship between them: “Women’s social quest concerns women’s struggle to gain respect, equality, and freedom in society----in work, in politics, and in relationships with women, men, and children; women’s spiritual quest concerns a women’s awakening to the depths of her soul and her position in the universe and it involves asking basic questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is my place in the universe?” (pp. 8-9). Women’s social quest is supported by their spiritual quest, which provides orientation for them. As women begin to name their own experience and to name the world, they sometimes feel that all of history, all of nature, and even gods are against them; most of history has been told from the perspective of men’s power. Women’s quest to overturn these ancient patterns can sometimes be supported by sheer inner determination. At other times the forces ranged against women’s social quest seem overpowering, and at this point a woman’s spiritual quest can support her social quest. Constructing female subjectivity is the purpose of women’s spiritual quest, which “involves a probing to the bedrock of a women’s experience of self and world that can support her quest to change the values of her society” (Christ, 1995, p. 11). She stops seeking approval of others, listens to her own voice, probes her experience, asserts her desire and constructs female subjectivity.

Women’s experience and desire are important for their discovery of themselves and the construction of subjectivity. As Christ (1995) asserts, “Women experience emptiness in their own lives----in self-hatred, in self-negation, and in being a victim; in relationship with men; and in the values that have shaped their lives” (p. 13). Indeed, this experience of emptiness and nothingness begins at birth and continues throughout women’s lives: From an early age a girl realizes that being female means understanding that her brothers have a right to demand more of their parents’ attention. Women’s feelings and experiences of inadequacy are reflected in their care about their appearances. A woman needs or wishes to get the approval and love of men and she usually gains it by appearing beautiful and sexy. Men are not brought up to think that they are worthless for they have the conventional power in both family and society. Therefore, the ordinary experience of women in patriarchal society is the experience and feeling of inadequacy and emptiness. According to Christ (1995), “for many women the experience of nothingness is a vague sense of anxiety, or an uneasy feeling that their lives have not turned out as they expected them to, while other women experience their nothingness so deeply that they begin to doubt the value of their lives, to consider themselves mad, or to contemplate suicide” (p. 16).

To face with the nothingness and inadequacy women know as lack of self, lack of power, and lack of value for them in the male-dominated world, women need to break the constraint of the ideology of patriarchy of being good wives and mothers. To open their eyes to the emptiness of lives requires great courage; however, it is the step towards “awakening”. Only after experiencing “the lack”, can women “question the meaning of their lives”, thus “opening themselves to the revelation of deeper sources of power and value”, and “the experience of nothingness often precedes an awakening”, similar to “a conversion experience”, in Christ words, in which the powers of being are revealed (1995, p. 13).

In Kingston and Tan’ books, the women characters, such as no-name aunt, Moon Orchid, Brave Orchid and Helen, have internalized the ideology that discriminates and under-values women, and it is difficult for them to realize that women and men are sovereign equals and subjects. However, it is gratifying to see that the narrator in The Woman Warrior and Winnie in The Kitchen God’s Wife hate the misogynic patriarchal codes and believe women are not inferior to men and are capable of doing what men can do. Unable to bear the anti-female prejudice of her mother and her immigrant community, the young narrator bursts out and screams before her parents,

I can do all kinds of things. I know how to get A’s, and they say I could be a scientist or a mathematician if I want. I can make a living and take care of myself…. Not everybody thinks I’m nothing. I am not going to be a salve or a wife. Even if I am stupid and talk funny and get sick, I won’t let you turn me into a slave or a wife. (Kingston, 1989, p. 201).

After “awakening” women will discover that they have all kind of desires just like men. It is these desires that bring up women’s creativity and colorful life, though sometimes they cause misery or even self-destruction. In Chapter Three of her book, The Bonds of Love, Benjamin (1988) focuses on woman’s lack of subjectivity, particularly sexual subjectivity, the consequences of the traditional sexual complementarity: man expresses desire and woman is the object of it, and she maintains, “the question of woman’s desire actually runs parallel to the question of power, and to be a subject of desire, a sexual agent, implies control over one’s own destiny, a freedom to will” (pp. 85-90). In the course of self-discovery and constructing the female subjectivity, woman’s experience should be expressed and desire should be discovered. Adrienne Rich named the creative potential of women’s desire when she wrote, “two women, eye to eye/measuring each other’s spirit, each other’s/limitless desire, / a whole new poetry beginning here” (cited in Christ, 1995, p. 7). Women yearn for a kind of literature, in which women’s stories and experience are told from women’s angles, not men’s, for they become more aware that they must suppress their own experience and desires to fit in the stories of men. As women writers express their own experience and desire, they set up connections with other women who hear their own muted desires and longings voiced.

Some French feminists, who have been deeply influenced by psychoanalysis, especially by Lacan’s reworking of Freud’s theories, argue that female sexuality is a subterranean and unknown entity. Cixous’ essay, “The Laugh of the Medusa” is a celebrated manifesto and advocation of women’s writing which calls for women to put their ‘bodies’ into their writing, and for her, patriarchal order can be challenged by feminine writing. In “White Tiger”, the second chapter of The Woman Warrior, Kingston (1989) sexualizes the ancient story of Fa Mu Lan. Her bold description of the woman warrior’s menstruation and childbirth relates power with motherhood. More than simply telling a traditional legend, she projects her own desire onto the warrior. As King-Kok Cheung (1993) observes, “Since military, sexual, and verbal power are traditionally male prerogatives, the fantasy opens Maxine to unconventional ways of asserting herself” (pp. 86-87). Fa Mu Lan becomes a new combination of soldier and mother:

Now when I am naked, I was a strange human being indeed----words carved on my back and the baby large in front…. He [her husband] caught the baby, a boy, and put it on my breast. “What are we going to do with this?” he asked, holding up the piece of umbilical cord that had been closest to the baby. “Let’s tie it to a flagpole until it dries,” I said. (Kingston, 1989, pp. 39–40).

Woman needs to recognize her own desire and realize that she is subject, an agent who can will things and make them happen. In Benjamin’s view, the discovery of woman’s desire can dissolve the confrontation between man and woman in traditional thinking, and form the recognition between the self and the other in order to achieve the equality for man and woman (Benjamin, 1986, p. 92). “Finding woman’s desire requires finding an alternative to the phallic structures, to the symbolic mode”, and the phallus as emblem of desire has represented “the one-sided individuality of subject meeting object, a complementarity that idealizes one side and devalues the other” (Benjamin, 1986, p. 98). Here she means “an alternative mode of structuring the psyche”, not just a symbol, a female counterpart to replace the phallic symbol, the phallus. Her analysis on woman’s desire is a process from subjectivity to intersubjectivity and she develops an idea of this other mode through the concept of intersubjectivity.

The self, the other and the construction of intersubjectivity

Concerning intersubjectivity, Benjamin turns back to the Freudian world of father, where women are defined by the lack of what men possess: the very emblem and embodiment of desire, power and subjectivity----the phallus and deconstructs classical psychoanalytic theory that woman’s destiny----her lack of subjectivity----is determined by her lack of a penis. It is not anatomy but the totality of a girl’s relationship with the father, in the context of gender polarity and unequal responsibility for childrearing that explains woman’s “lack”, and “the solution to the dilemma of woman’s desire must include a mother (i.e. a female ideal) who is articulated as a sexual subject, one who expresses her own desire” (Benjamin, 1986, p.92-93). A possible alternative mode of representation (the intersubjective mode of desire) to challenge the hegemony of the phallus as the sole embodiment of desire is that both traditional figures of infancy----the holding mother whose containment and the open space created by it allow the self to experience as truly inner, and the exiting father that ignites the child’s own sense of activity and desire----must be both valued. The intersubjective mode assumes “the possibility of a context with others in which desire is constituted for the self”, and thus it assumes “the paradox that in being with the other, I may experience the most profound sense of self” (Benjamin, 1986, p.92-93). The intersubjective mode, where two subjects meet, where both man and woman can be subject, may point to “a locus for woman’s independent desire” and “a relationship to desire that is not represented by the phallus” (Benjamin, 1986, p.92-93).

For solving the conflicts of gender, race and culture in the two books, the relationship between the self and the other must be focused on. We must find out what the relationship between men and women, Americans and the Chinese, American culture and Chinese one is and if there is superiority and inferiority, or domination and subordination between them. The concept of the unified, coherent and self-conscious self has been challenged in various ways by Postmodernism, deconstructionism, psychoanalysis and other movements in contemporary philosophy. According to Marilyn Friedman (2000), “unity, coherence and self-consciousness are matters of degree, and a subject need not be absolutely unified, coherent, or transparently and incorrigibly self-aware in order to exercise autonomy” (p. 220). Therefore, only a sufficient degree of those traits is needed for a subject. No man is an island, and over the whole course of their lives, most human beings remain dependent on others in at least some ways. The awareness of oneself as a self and the associated capacity for self-reflection require a context of other selves from whom one learns to distinguish oneself, just as Winnicott’s most daring statement, “The Use of an Object and Relating Through Identifications” tells us that “a world of shared reality” can feed back “other-than-me substance” into the subject (Winnicott, 1991, p.122). And as Friedman (2000) observes, “a person can realize autonomy while remaining dependent on others, caring for them intensely, taking ample account of the needs and desires of loved ones, cooperating with others in collective endeavors, or on some accounts, even subordinating herself to others” (pp. 217-18).

Autonomy more than relatedness to others has been emphasized by most theories of development, leaving unexplored the territory where subjects meet. In analyzing the conflict between assertion of self and need for the other, Benjamin (1988) concludes that to affirm itself, the self “must acknowledge the other”, and “to acknowledge the other would be to deny the absoluteness of the self”, and therefore, “establishing myself” (Hegel’s “being for oneself”), in turn, means I must finally acknowledge the other as existing for himself and not just for me (pp. 11-50). Therefore, the paradox of recognition, the need for acknowledgement that turns us back to dependence on the other, brings about mutual recognition.

In contrast with Freudian’s idea of “splitting”, in which two complementary elements are set up as opposites, intersubjective theory presents to us a situation in which two subjects recognize and acknowledge each other. Merleau-Ponty (1968) upholds the irreducibility of the other; there is no “fusion or coinciding of me with it” (p.123), and the other is a subject sufficient to himself. But why has the dualistic view of the individual predominated for so long? Benjamin gives us the answer, “Perhaps it is because this [intersubjective] conception of the individual reflects a powerful experience----whose origins we have discovered in the rapprochement of conflict----the experience of paradox as painful, or even intolerable. Perhaps, also, because of a continuing fear that dependency on the other is a threat to independence, that recognition of the other compromises the self” (1988, p. 50). Interdependence of the self and the other is inevitable, and searching for self-knowledge and positing an alternative relation to otherness are needed for female subjectivity. The necessary tension between assertion of self and recognition of other, between sameness and difference is important for the relationship between self and other.

Woman is always regarded as object or the Other in contrast with man, the subject. Graham C. Kinloch (1979), in his book called The Sociology of Minority Group Relations, names women as one of the “physical minorities”, which are “defined by a power elite as different and/or inferior on the basis of certain perceived characteristics and is consequently treated in a negative fashion” (p. 77). For a long time, women have been regarded as inferior by nature. Menstruation and parturition, to some extent, imply limitations on women’s activities, especially in the past. Women, burdened with the reproductive function, have been portrayed as different with unique societal roles, concentrating on childbearing and family-related activities. Biological explanations can be misused as an excuse for sexual oppression and discrimination towards women. However, some feminists view women’s biology as a source of superiority rather than inferiority. One of the earliest defenses of woman’s abilities was written by Eliza Burt Gramble, a professional writer and feminist. In her book, The Evolution of Woman, she recounts the many examples from nature which demonstrate, “ The female is the primary unit of creation, and the male functions are simply supplemental or complementary,” and to the fact that human male may be larger than the female, she concedes, “He is still shorter lived, has less endurance, is more predisposed to organic diseases, and is more given to reversion to former types, facts which show that this greater size is not the result of higher development” (cited in Degler, 1991, p. 109). However, these arguments run the risk of landing in the same position occupied by male chauvinists.

Women should fight for their equal political and economic rights that men have, but they shouldn’t negate the opposite sex. As Benjamin (1988) observes, “if we fully negate the other, that is, if we assume complete control over him and destroy his identity and will, then we have negated ourselves as well. For then, there is no one there to recognize us, no one there for us to desire” (p. 39). By negating men, women can’t solve the conflicts between the two genders, and this action only repeats the strategy that men have used on women for sexual discrimination and oppression. It is obvious that the breakdown in the fundamental tension of mutual recognition leads to the psychology of domination. We need “simultaneity and equality, not exclusion and the privileging of either male or female sets of experiences, capacities, and relationships” (Benjamin, 1986, p. 95). Man and woman need each other to assert identity and subjectivity. The rapprochement or harmonious relationship between men and women can be constructed on mutual recognition and acknowledgement: both are sovereign equals and subjects. In The Kitchen God’s Wife, after breaking away from Wen Fu, who takes her as his property and treats her to his will, Winnie finds her happiness by marrying Jimmy Louie, who not only loves her, but more importantly, respects her and treats her as his equal. Therefore, for both women and men, only by casting the misogynic ideology aside and acknowledging that both women and men are equal subjects, can the conflict between the two genders be solved and a harmonious relationship between them be constructed.

Regarding the cultural conflict between the Chinese-born mothers and the American-born daughters in the two works, the intersubjective view should also be set up. Mothers still consider themselves as Chinese, so they regard Americans as the other. However, they can’t stubbornly stick to the old Chinese ways and repel the American ones, for otherwise, they’ll never maintain a good relationship with their American daughters. To American-born daughters, sometimes the Chinese are the other, while at other times, Americans are the other. This is the predicament of “the between-world condition”. They can’t just cling to the American ways and reject the Chinese ones. As Amy Ling observes, “One must reconcile the two and make one’s peace with the old” (141). In order to achieve the balance in “the between-world condition”, a mature Chinese American must acknowledge the value of both the Chinese culture and the American one and try to reach reconciliation.

The concluding legend of Ts’ai Yen in The Woman Warrior suggests that the narrator has finally to appreciate and draw resourcefully upon both cultures without being constricted by either. The outright rejection of ethnic culture is not uncommon among children of immigrants. Polarizing Chinese and American cultures and censuring the one and sanctifying the other can only make the cultural conflicts more severe. In King-Kok Cheung’s view, the structure of The Woman Warrior, reflecting the sensibility of an author older and wiser, undercuts the “truth” of the narrator’s explicit statements by revealing her profound indebtedness to her Chinese American legacy (1993, pp. 77-78). It’s palpable that the narrator becomes mature with age and finally abandons Chinese and white American conventional standards to make room for “renewed gender and ethnic identities and for sexual, racial, and international politics grounded in reciprocity rather than in domination” (Cheung, 1993, p.78).

In psychology, mother is often perceived as the other. As Luce Irigaray (2000) observes, “The social order, our culture, psychoanalysis itself, want it this way: the mother must remain forbidden, excluded” (p. 418). According to her, in our society, man/father has the power, so the child “should make progress, advance, go outside and forget” mother; both boys and girls want to do this, though girls perhaps will be pushed back to mother by the misogyny after they have entered the “man’s” world (Irigaray, 2000, p. 418). To the American-born daughters, their Chinese-born mothers are perhaps the other’s other, not only on the psychological level, but also on the ethnic level because of the cultural estrangement between the two generations. The narrator in The Woman Warrior and Pearl battled for autonomy from their mother in their adolescence. However, who can totally independent of others especially one’s mother?

Though the maternal heritage’s influence on the ethnic women writers like Kingston and Tan is not openly acknowledged, “the consistently inconsistent mother” nurtures their “ability to entertain contradictions, to doubt absolutes, to see truth as multidimensional, and to escape from the scientific authority that sets empirical truth and the voice of reason above the promptings of the imagination” (Cheung, 1993, p. 99). Mothers’ protection and direction, “a matrilineal tradition” and “inter-generational nurturance and connectedness” as Rima Bhattacharya (2019) defines (p.440) can give daughters the nutrition and strength for growth, and this is not contradictory to daughters’ asserting of themselves and their freedom to imagine, discover and create, only if both sides maintain “the necessary tension between self-assertion and mutual recognition that allows self and other to meet as sovereign equals” (Benjamin, 1988, p. 12).

At the end of The Woman Warrior, the narrator and her mother, Brave Orchid combine to tell a story----“The beginning is hers, the ending, mine” (Kingston, 1989, p. 206). The narrator eventually maintains her own subjectivity and keeps a harmonious relationship with her mother by both asserting her American value system and acknowledging her mother’s Chinese one. As the narrator tells us in the last paragraph of the book, “She [Ts’ai Yen] 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, 1989, p. 209). Conciliation is reached between the daughter and the mother or between American culture as represented by the former and Chinese culture by the latter. In The Kitchen God’s Wife, with the increase of her age and communication with her mother, Pearl’s understanding of the latter deepens, and she “can taste” and “can feel” what her mother once tasted and felt (Tan, 1991, p. 410). As Bhattacharya (2019) argues that the daughters “self-consciously engage in the recuperative project of replacing the figure an overtly critical and authoritative maternal voice in their heads with that of an oppressed woman who has fought larger battles in her life, compared to their modern dilemmas” (p.443). For the mothers and the daughters, the tension between the similarity and difference in the Chinese and American cultures is finally well maintained, and their relationship is “a continual exchange of influence” on each other (Benjamin, 1988, p. 49).

Concerning racial conflicts in the two books, the intersubjective view opens up a new vision for the way out. In The Woman Warrior, the juvenile narrator’s internalization of the ideology of white supremacy, and Brave Orchid and Winnie’s unfriendly attitudes towards the ghosts (Americans) are really problematic. They should realize that there is no superiority or inferiority among races and all races are sovereign equals and subjects. The juvenile narrator’s self-disgust at the beginning of the book as a Chinese American is unreasonable. People of color should not internalize Eurocentrism or imperialism that the whites maintain to dominate and colonize people of other races. For all races, the psychology of domination and submission should be cast aside and taken place by the mutual recognition and acknowledgement that we are all subjects in our own rights and “we are able and need to recognize that other subjects as different yet alike, an other who is capable of sharing similar mental experience” (Benjamin, 1988, p. 20). One race meeting another race is a subject meeting another subject, instead of a subject meeting an object.

Conclusion

Ways of solving the conflicts of gender, race and culture suggested in both books are breaking silence and constructing intersubjectivity. Constructing subjectivity or intersubjectivity is not a solitary activity, for everyone lives in the society that consists of various people. In the past, people were accustomed to the subject/object dualism and the notion of a solitary self who categorized the objectified world. The subject/object dualism prioritizes the abstract consciousness and activities of individual without acknowledging that social relations with others are constitutive of the individual. The self’s wish for an “absolute independence” clashes with the self’s need for others’ recognition. Benjamin’s theory on intersubjectivity that calls for maintaining the necessary tension between the assertion of the self and the recognition of the other throws an illuminative light on this problem. As core element of intersubjectivity, mutual recognition is needed and the subject will gradually recognize the other’s subjectivity, developing “the capacity for attunement and tolerence of difference” (Benjamin, 1990, p.33). And the “shifting awareness between the self and the Other” is of extreme importance for the social world into which the self is thrown, and it is “elaborated” in this “shifting awareness between my perspective and the perspectives of others, my vantage and the vantage of others, my interests and those of others” (Daly, 2016, p.192).

Last but not the least, we have to pay attention that the maintaining of the intersubjective is not an unmovable process. Subjectivity, as many postmodernist and post-structuralists have observed, is neither unified nor fixed, rather it is something that is constantly in process, and the self is sustained by the continuous redefinition of the boundaries between the self and the other. According to Benjamin (1988), the maintaining of “tension between the assertion of the self and the recognition of the other” is a cycling process: maintaining----breakdown----renewal of the maintaining (p. 223). Therefore, “breakdown and renewal are constant possibilities”, and it is crucial to find “the point at which breakdown occurs and the point at which it is possible to recreate the tension and restore the condition of recognition” (Benjamin, 1988, p.223).

The conclusion here is both modest and a little utopian perhaps: for all women and men, not only the characters in the two books, to solve the conflicts of gender, race and culture by expressing and discovery of oneself and constructing intersubjectivity is a little simple-minded, for there are various social, historical and economical elements existing in different countries and areas, but the two ways are indeed indispensable and absolutely necessary steps, as a Merleau-Pontian ethical approach tells us that the subject has “intrinsic ethical capacities by virtue of his ontological interdependence with other subjects” (Daly, 2016, p.9).