Whispers Through The Warrior’s Thread: Cognitive Dissonance, Magical Realism, And The Power Of Healing Self In Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts
Keywords:
cognitive dissonance, healing self, hyphenated-identities, magical realism, mythAbstract
The present research probes into the way magical realism constitutes a therapeutic paradigm from cognitive dissonance in Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. In this creative nonfiction, Kingston opens a narrative window into her readers evoking the Chinese myths, family stories and events of her California childhood that have shaped her identity as the inbetweener. While other studies have done much to examine this work from feminist, postcolonial, or cultural identity perspectives, almost no research has gone far to put under a literary microscope the intersection of magical realism with cognitive dissonance symptom. Through a reference to Cognitive Dissonance Theory, the research explores the protagonist's psychological journey and identity malaise as she endures to resist the conflicting demands for maintaining the traits of her Chinese sense of belonging as met by a demanding quest for asserting an American identity. Methodologically, the study undertakes a literary scrutiny that is succinctly backed up by a psychological framework. Precisely, it serves the textual analysis of Kingston’s narrative, reading the protagonist demeanor through the lens of psychological theory and narrative strategies. This narrative therapy, infused with narrative strategies borrowed from magical realism, blurs the lines between reality and imagination in such a way that enables the reader to explore the protagonist's cultural and personal identities. Categorized under literary psychology, the research aims to bring to view the vitality of narrative techniques: myth writing and storytelling, as therapeutic potential for individuals who have to grapple with the syndromes of cognitive dissonance. The study comes to a conclusion that myth and storytelling serve as a compelling mode of psychological therapy from personal and cultural dissonance.
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