Kingston's young adult life, however, remains a voiceless one. Juxtaposed with her fantasies of warrior grandeur in "White Tigers" are recollections of whispered protest at one of her employer's racist attitudes, which she challenges using a "small-person's voice that makes no impact." Refusing to type invitations for a different employer who chooses to hold a banquet at a restaurant being picketed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Congress of Racial Equality, two political groups active in fighting racism, Kingston is immediately fired. But again her protest is whispered, her "voice unreliable."
Kingston's empowering women by creating individualized voices for them also extends to her own mother. Because Brave Orchid, despite her many years in America, does not speak English, she is effectively voiceless in her new world. Through Kingston, however, Brave Orchid's achievements are vocalized and recorded, as are all of the women's lives in The Woman Warrior. Kingston's memoir reveals Brave Orchid's sacrifices and lifts her out of the nameless Chinese crowd living in America. Ironically, however, this process of voicing women's experiences threatens Kingston's own self-esteem, especially in her relationship with her mother. For example, when a delivery boy mistakenly delivers pharmaceutical drugs to the family's laundry business, Brave Orchid is livid: Certainly, she thinks, the drugstore purposefully delivered the drugs to bring bad luck on her family. Brave Orchid forces Kingston, as the oldest child, to demand "reparation candy" from the druggist, a chore that Kingston finds embarrassing. "You can't entrust your voice to the Chinese, either," Kingston writes; "they want to capture your voice for their own use. They want to fix up your tongue to speak for them." In addition, Kingston's embarrassment stems from her perception that Chinese sounds "chingchong ugly" to Americans, like "guttural peasant noises."
