How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
My aunt haunts me – her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her, though not origamied into houses and clothes (1.49).
Kingston pays tribute to her aunt's memory by writing her story.
Quote #2
When we Chinese girls listened to the adults talk-story, we learned that we failed if we grew up to be but wives or slaves […] [The white crane boxing story] was one of the tamer, more modern stories, mere introduction. My mother told others that followed swordswomen through woods and palaces for years. Night after night my mother would talk-story until we fell asleep. I couldn't tell where the stories left off and the dreams began, her voice the voice of the heroines in my sleep (2.1-2).
Brave Orchid equipped her children with role models through storytelling.
Quote #3
When I dream that I am wire without flesh, there is a letter on blue airmail paper that floats above the night ocean between here and China. It must arrive safely or else my grandmother and I will lose each other (2.183).
Kingston imagines that the ties between her grandmother and her is in the form of a letter.
Quote #4
The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them. What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are "report a crime" and "report to five families." The reporting is the vengeance – not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. And I have so many words – "c****" words and "g***" words too – that they do not fit on my skin (2.189).
Kingston describes writing as a form of combat, as a potential act of heroism.
Quote #5
To make my waking life American-normal, I turn on the lights before anything untoward makes an appearance. I push the deformed into my dreams, which are in Chinese, the language of impossible stories. Before we can leave our parents, they stuff our heads like the suitcases which they jam-pack with homemade underwear (3.138).
Kingston shows how language shifts one's way of thinking and believing. Knowing more than one language only complicates any idea of reality.
Quote #6
"Why didn't you write to tell her once and for all you weren't coming back and you weren't sending for her?" Brave Orchid asked.
"I don't know," he said. "It's as if I had turned into a different person. The new life around me was so complete; it pulled me away. You became people in a book I had read a long time ago" (4.323-324).
Moon Orchid's husband treats his old life with Moon Orchid as an old book, suggesting that he has created a new life for himself, a new story.
Quote #7
Brave Orchid saw that all variety had gone from her sister. She was indeed mad. "The difference between mad people and sane people," Brave Orchid explained to the children, "is that sane people have variety when they talk-story. Mad people have only one story that they talk over and over" (4.363).
Brave Orchid believes that variety and even inconsistency are necessary attributes in a good storyteller. The ability to change and create new stories makes one better able to live in reality.