Maternal Love in the Warrior WomanWhat constitutes a mother-daughter relationship? In our society mothers are generally portrayed in the media as caring and loving people. We see one mother cradling her newborn baby in a diaper ad in Woman's World magazine, while another lovingly gives her baby cold medicine in a television commercial. In fact, today it is even considered a beautiful thing, rather than a crude and denunciatory action, for a mother to breastfeed her baby in public. In light of this, for Maxine Hong Kingston's mother, maternal instinct evidently did not play such an important role in the relationship with her daughter, both on an emotional and physical level. Through “Shaman,” the third chapter of her novel, Kingston makes it clear to her readers that the ties that bound her to her mother were made of anything but love. She tells the story of her mother as a determined young student, distant from her peers. She had worked her way through medical school in an effort to prove her worth as a scholar, as well as that of a strong and determined woman. It appears that it was this quality that he carried with him for the rest of his life. While other mothers choose to protect their children from needless harm, the author's mother had "given [her] images to dream about: nightmarish children who show up[red] again and again" (86). He instilled in his young daughter such a strong fear of war and bombing that she often "dreamed that the sky [was] covered from horizon to horizon with rows of airplanes, airships, rocket ships, [and] flying bombs" ( 96 ). Kingston had also been taught to think of all Americans as ghosts, as well as being repeatedly informed that one day they would return home so they could buy "real" furniture and "smell flowers for the first time" (98). Finally, even as an adult, we observe how her mother passes on guilt to her, “responsibility for the time, responsibility for the oceans that stand in the way,” for essentially preventing her from being a warrior woman (108). In a physical sense, we never actually see Kingston's mother touch her or even hear her say "I love you." As a child the author recalls that "her mother's enthusiasm for [her] was duller than that for the slave" her mother had loved so much in China. (82).