Kingston's Concrete America In The Woman Warrior, Kingston develops the metaphor of comparing concrete to her American life burying her past, in order to illustrate how abandoning her Chinese heritage provided a sense of clarity and freedom for her in America. Shortly after Kingston leaves home, her identity as an American is increasingly set in stone, and she begins to untangle the mess of her confusing past. Reflecting on her life in America, Kinston states, "Be careful what you say. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic is the new way of seeing. I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation. I enjoy the simplicity. Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways …show more content…
She yearns to strip her existence of the culture that complexes her; desiring a bland, flavorless world, one with paths of concrete rather than the lush, fantastical forests of her mother's talk stories. She lets go of the hazy, blurred vision of a Chinese immigrant, like searching for the signal of a lighthouse fading in the fog, ever sifting through the parts of China that distort her vision. When Kingston looks around her now, she doesn't see the haunting ghosts of her mother's stories. She states that in America, "Now the colors are gentler and fewer; smells are antiseptic. Now when I peek in the basement window where the villagers say they see a girl dancing like a bottle imp, I can no longer see a spirit in a skirt make of light, but a voiceless girl dancing when she thought no one was looking" (Kingston 205). Kingston rejects the magical aspects of her Chinese culture, thus indulging now in the sterile life of America where she is free from the chains of her childhood, in turn, no longer confused by the stories that once clouded her life. Before Kingston leaves home, she desperately searches for what is real, depicted when Kingston states about her mother's stories, "They scramble me up. You lie with your stories. You won't tell me a