The Woman Warrior Language and Communication Quotes

I liked the N***o students (Black Ghosts) best because they laughed the loudest and talked to me as if I were a daring talker too. One of the N***o girls had her mother coil braids over her ears Shanghai-style like mine; we were Shanghai twins except that she was covered with black like my paintings. Two N***o kids enrolled in Chinese school, and the teachers gave them Chinese names (5.33).

It was when I found out I had to talk that school became a misery, that the silence became a misery. I did not speak and felt bad each time that I did not speak. […] The other Chinese girls did not talk either, so I knew the silence had to do with being a Chinese girl (3.34).

I could not understand "I." The Chinese "I" has seven strokes, intricacies. How could the American "I," assuredly wearing a hat like the Chinese, have only three strokes, the middle so straight? Was it out of politeness that this writer left off strokes the way a Chinese has to write her own name small and crooked? No, it was not politeness; "I" is a capital and "you" is lower-case (5.35).