Woman Warriors: White Tigers
This project began as an assignment for ENG 387: Asian American Anti Memoir. We were told to create an anti essay- write, create, birth, anything we wanted that engaged with a text we had read for the course. I chose to focus on the "White Tigers" chapter of The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston and created a lighting design captured by a series of photos for the story.
The moment before she is taken off to the mountains.
“When the mountains and the pines turned into blue oxen, blue dogs and blue people standing, the old couple asked me to spend the night in the hut” (21).
“The old couple tucked me into a bed just my width” (21).
“On the surface I saw only my own round reflection” (22).
“I had walked into dead land” (25).
“The first night I burned half the wood and slept curled against the mountain”(24).
“When I would kneel all day without my legs cramping and my breathing became even , the squirrels would bury their hoardings in the hem of my shirts and then bend their tails in a celebration dance” (23).
“During my seventh year (I would be fourteen), the two old people led me blindfolded to the mountains of the white tigers” (24).
“When I put my hands down to look again, I recognized the old grey man and the old brown woman walking towards me out of the pine forest” (27).
“They were molten changing gold..... The man and the woman grow bigger and bigger. So bright, all light.” (27).
“The closest I came to seeing a dragon whole was when the old people cut away a small strip of bark on a pine that was over 3000 years old” (29).
Returned back to the natural world.