this myth she learns that it is ok to be different, to be a Chinese-American woman. She proves to herself that she can be whoever she wants whether society agrees with her or not. She can make up her own myths and be the hero, regardless of what her strong willed mother says.Kingston’s life growing up was plagued with “ghosts.” Kingston writes, “We were regularly visited by the Mail Ghost, Meter Reader Ghost, Garbage Ghost. Staying off the streets did no good.” She is living in a completely different culture than her mother had raised her to understand. “We hid directly under the windows, pressed against the baseboards until the ghost, calling us in the ghost language so that we’d almost answer to stop its voice, gave up.” As a child she didn’t understand that these were her neighbors going on about their daily lives, while she was stuck in her own culture, her own world. Her mother doesn’t help her realize that Americans are real people too. Her mother doesn’t want to give up her origins for a new way of life, a new culture in “The Gold Mountain.” “Whenever my parents said “home,” they suspended America. They suspended enjoyment, but I did not want to go to China.” It seems that her life growing up, raised as a Chinese girl living in an American culture was very confusing to her. She knew that her parents didn’t like this place and would rather be back at “home,” but she only knew one home and that was California.The ghost stories helped Kingston and her family put a name on the confusion the American people caused them. In the Chinese culture, I think that they used the word ghost for something unfamiliar to them, something confusing. Instead of calling the Americans weird or strange, they would call them ghosts. Kingston also says that her aunt “haunted” her from childhood on. I think sh...
