Breaking silence and constructing intersubjectivity: ways of solving the conflicts in *The Woman Warrior* and *The Kitchen God's Wife*

The paper examines how silence functions as imposed invisibility in the works of Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan, focusing on Chinese American women situated between Chinese and American cultures. It argues that silence in these narratives signals and conceals conflicts of gender, race, and culture, often resulting from sexism, racism, and linguistic barriers. The study proposes that breaking silence is necessary but insufficient; resolving these conflicts requires constructing female subjectivity and, crucially, intersubjectivity. Drawing on Jessica Benjamin, intersubjectivity is defined as the interplay of two subjectivities wherein the other is recognized as an autonomous center of self rather than an object. This theoretical lens is advanced to envision equitable communication across genders, races, and cultures.

The paper situates its analysis within feminist, psychoanalytic, and intercultural communication scholarship on silence and recognition. It notes that prior work on Kingston and Tan often centers on matrilineal traditions, migration, and identity (Lindenmeyer, Bhattacharya, Wai-sum, Chandra, Poppenhagen). Cross-cultural studies show silence frequently associates with conflict or negative emotion: Tannen characterizes high-involvement styles as strategies to avoid silence and frames silence as indirectness; Scollon treats silence as a metaphor for malfunction; Cheung highlights oppressive, shame-induced, or historically imposed silences. Ling discusses the paradox of racial visibility/invisibility for minorities in the U.S. The paper also engages post-structural and psychoanalytic theorists on subjectivity and intersubjectivity—Butler, Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva, Winnicott, Merleau-Ponty—and centers Benjamin’s account of mutual recognition as an alternative to subject/object dualisms. This literature supports viewing silence as both meaningful and potentially destructive, and frames the need for subjectivity and intersubjectivity in negotiating gendered, racial, and cultural conflicts.

This is a qualitative, interpretive literary analysis. The author conducts close comparative readings of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Amy Tan’s The Kitchen God’s Wife to examine representations of silence and its relation to gendered, racial, and cultural conflicts. The analysis is theoretically grounded in feminist psychoanalytic theory, especially Jessica Benjamin’s concept of intersubjectivity and mutual recognition, and is informed by post-structural perspectives on subjectivity (Butler; Cixous; Irigaray; Kristeva). Intercultural communication research (e.g., Tannen; Scollon; Cheung; Ling) informs the treatment of silence and racialized visibility/invisibility. No empirical data were generated or analyzed; the study relies on textual evidence, thematic interpretation, and theoretical synthesis.

- Silence in the two novels is articulate but stifling: it signals hidden conflicts—patriarchal control (e.g., the no-name aunt in The Woman Warrior; Moon Orchid’s submission), racial marginalization (school silence and whisper before racist bosses), and intercultural rifts (mother–daughter communication barriers; differing views on filial duty). - Breaking silence is necessary to alleviate harm: Kingston’s narrator gains voice (e.g., the throat-pain confession list; Ts’ai Yen’s communicative song as emblem of translation across cultures); in The Kitchen God’s Wife, Winnie discloses her past, resists Wen Fu, and rebuilds life, improving mother–daughter understanding. - Voice alone is insufficient: articulate women (Brave Orchid, Fa Mu Lan, Helen Kwong) may reproduce misogynistic norms, showing that speech without transformed consciousness can perpetuate patriarchy; thus female subjectivity must be constructed. - Construction of female subjectivity entails an "awakening" from internalized inferiority and emptiness (Christ), recognition of women’s desire as agency (Benjamin), and reimagining feminine power and embodiment (e.g., Kingston’s sexualized Fa Mu Lan linking martial power and motherhood). - Intersubjectivity (Benjamin) offers a path beyond domination: mutual recognition between self and other—across gender, culture, and race—enables subjects to meet as equals. Examples include Winnie’s egalitarian partnership with Jimmy Louie; Kingston’s narrator’s reconciliation with Brave Orchid; cultural reciprocity symbolized by Ts’ai Yen’s song; and the call to reject internalized white supremacy and racial hierarchies. - Effective conflict resolution requires maintaining a dynamic tension between asserting self and recognizing the other; this balance is cyclical and must be continually renewed.

The analysis demonstrates that silence in Kingston’s and Tan’s novels both encodes and exacerbates gendered, racial, and cultural conflicts. While breaking silence initiates visibility and counters erasure, the persistence of internalized patriarchal and racial ideologies shows why voice alone cannot resolve systemic tensions. By foregrounding female subjectivity—through self-discovery, acknowledgment of desire, and repudiation of self-negation—the texts model the preconditions for equitable relations. Benjamin’s intersubjectivity provides the conceptual bridge from individual awakening to relational ethics: mutual recognition reconfigures gender relations (replacing domination with parity, as with Winnie and Jimmy Louie), fosters intercultural reciprocity (mother–daughter reconciliation; Ts’ai Yen’s culturally translated song), and reframes race relations as encounters between subjects rather than subjects and objects. Thus, the findings address the research aim by showing that sustainable resolution emerges from both expressive acts (breaking silence) and relational structures (intersubjectivity) that legitimize difference without hierarchy.

The paper concludes that two indispensable steps to address conflicts of gender, race, and culture in the examined works are: (1) breaking silence to counter invisibility and articulate experience; and (2) constructing subjectivity and, crucially, intersubjectivity grounded in mutual recognition. It critiques subject/object dualism for neglecting how social relations constitute the self and emphasizes maintaining a dynamic tension between asserting self and recognizing the other. Subjectivity is processual and intersubjective balance is cyclical—maintenance, breakdown, and renewal recur. While acknowledging that broader social, historical, and economic conditions complicate realization, the study affirms that cultivating mutual recognition and attunement to difference is foundational for more equitable gender, cultural, and racial relations.

The study is a theoretical, text-based analysis without empirical data; findings derive from interpretive readings and may not generalize beyond the selected novels. The author acknowledges that proposing conflict resolution through self-expression and intersubjectivity is modest and somewhat utopian given complex social, historical, and economic contexts that shape gendered, cultural, and racial dynamics. No data were generated or analyzed, and the work does not test outcomes empirically.