女勇士是汤亭亭的成名作

用国内比较流行的一个词，汤亭亭可以说是一个“获奖专业户”：2008年度国家图书奖的“杰出文学贡献奖”、“美国学院与艺术、人文研究院大奖”、“亚美文学工作坊终身成就奖”、“国家人文勋章”等等。汤亭亭自己也承认，同为当代美国华裔女作家，她的作品远不如谭恩美流行，但是在学术界与“精英领域”的影响，则远远超过了谭恩美。

她的母亲
在汤亭亭看来，她的母亲是一个真正的女权主义者。在祖父的坚持下，母亲和几个姨妈没有缠脚，而且都接受了良好的教育。母亲就读的是广州的医科学校，教师都是来自欧洲的西医，“她是第一名把西药带回村子里的医生”。
母亲也是汤亭亭叙事上的师承，在她的小说中，很多故事都是来自母亲。“我们家里有许多故事时间，早餐过后大家会讲讲各自的梦。梦是一个很好的连接点。我在新加坡与一位老姨妈重逢时，她问我的第一句话就是‘你母亲梦着什么？’，所以梦在我们家非常重要。还有临睡前的故事时间，小孩们睡到床上以后，母亲会给我们讲故事直到我们睡着。这是我们家的一个老传统，我的外祖父就因每天在村里的广场上讲故事而闻名。”
“我母亲告诉我的故事，有一些是她的梦，也有一些是她对中国的记忆。她保持着很好的记忆，但也有一些是不真实的记忆，这些不真实的记忆对她也很重要。我母亲是一名非法移民，我父亲也是，他躲在轮船上从古巴偷渡到了纽约。父亲有时会通过赌博来赚钱，有一个男人把钱全都输光了，我父亲就向那人提出用他妻子的签证抵债。那个男人就这样把他妻子的签证输掉了，我父亲就用这个签证，让母亲来到了美国。为了要过关，她必须熟记这个陌生女人的一切。包括她来自哪个村子，以及关于那个陌生村子的所有细节。因为作为一名非法移民，政府和权力机构会随时盘问她，这时她就必须讲别人的故事。这在美籍华裔中是个普遍现象。”母亲的叙事同时有着真实和虚拟两条线索，这在汤的小说中也俯拾皆是。

她的父亲与姓名
曾经写诗的父亲汤姆•汤(Tom Hong)是汤亭亭的中文老师，来到美国之后，先在洗衣店打工，后来自己开店。他的写作梦想通过女儿得以实现。他常常用嫉妒的口气对她说:“你看你多好，光写字就可以活下去了。”
尽管在伯克利大学学习英语文学专业，还做了很长时间的高中英语教师，然而汤亭亭偶尔午夜梦回，丈夫厄尔告诉她，“你在梦里说了很久的中文。”
英语和广东话是她的母语，而普通话则基本是一种“外语”。每当她回到中国，这种语言的交错都给她带来困惑。在故乡新会，她操着古镇四邑的方言跟表亲们谈天完全无须翻译。但“有次我去南京一个学校，他们贴了大大的横幅，我看到英文写的是欢迎Tang Tingting，广东话里‘汤’的发音是‘hong’，我完全没反应过来他们是在欢迎我。”
父亲对她的名字常常被写成“汤婷婷”有些愤怒。“给我起名字的时候，父亲是想让我显得男性化一些的。父亲解释‘亭亭玉立’是一种不倚靠别人的独立状态，不是‘袅袅婷婷’那么柔顺。”
她的英语名字则另有来历。1940年出生于加州斯托克顿的汤亭亭是第二代移民，前一年，她母亲刚刚偷渡到美国。两位漂流异乡的中国人深感命运如轮盘赌般难测，便以当时一个以好运出名的金发赌徒的名字玛克辛(Maxine)作为女儿的英文名:希望她能给家庭带来好运气。

女勇士
《女勇士》有两个最主要的叙述者:母亲与女儿，它以母亲和女儿共同讲故事的方式将“女勇士”的故事铺开。书中有这样两段：母亲挑开了女儿的舌筋，使她能言善辩。女儿曾经狠揍了一个和她年龄相仿、但不会在人前讲话的华人女孩，对她说，“你知道吗？不讲话你就是棵植物！不讲话你就没有个性！”她的小说明确地表述了她对“沉默”的看法——一个人不正常的精神症候。在书中勇敢、乐观的人物全都是敢于讲话、善于讲话的人。她把“不讲话”视为软弱。
这部被选入美国教材的小说，颠覆了当时美国对中国女性的偏见——在此之前，中国女性在美式成见里要么是缺乏力量的美丽娃娃，要么是妖媚神秘的邪恶化身——小说化用了中国历史故事中的花木兰形象，刻画出华裔女性血液中的果敢与担当，以及她们融入美国的蜕变过程。在30多年前的美国，正是因为这本小说，“花木兰”成为深入人心的中国女英雄，汤亭亭也被冠以“花木兰教母”之名。

试读
选自汤亭亭《女勇士》开头。汤亭亭是美国华裔女作家，《女勇士》使她立足于美国文坛。选段中的第一句话 "You must not tell anyone what I am about to tell you." 曾一度成为美国大学生的口头禅。

"You must not tell anyone," my mother said, "what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born.
"1n 1924 just a few days after our village celebrated seventeen hurry-up weddings - to make sure that every young man who went `out on the road' would responsibly come home - your father and his brothers and your grandfather and his brothers and your aunt's new husband sailed for America, the Gold Mountain. It was your grandfather's last trip. Those lucky enough to get contracts waved goodbye from the decks. They fed and guarded the stowaways and helped them off in Cuba, New York, Bali, Hawaii. `We'll meet in California next year,' they said. All of them sent money home.
"I remember looking at your aunt one day when she and I were dressing;I had not noticed before that she had such a protruding melon of a stomach. But I did not think, `She's pregnant,' until she began to look like other pregnant women, her shirt pulling and the white tops of her black pants showing. She could not have been pregnant, you see, because her husband had been gone for years. No one said anything. We did not discuss it. In early summer she was ready to have the child, long after the time when it could have been possible.
"The village had also been counting. On the night the baby was to be born the villagers raided our house. Some were crying. Like a great saw, teeth strung with lights, files of people walked zigzag across our land, tearing the rice. Their lanterns doubled in the disturbed black water, which drained away through the broken bunds. As the villagers closed in, we could see that some of them, probably men and women we knew well, wore white masks. The people with long hair hung it over their faces. Women with short hair made it stand up on end. Some had tied white bands around their foreheads, arms, and legs.
"At first they threw mud and rocks at the house. Then they threw eggs and began slaughtering our stock. We could hear the animals scream their deaths - the roosters, the pigs, a last great roar from the ox. Familiar wild heads flared in our night windows;the villagers encircled us. Some of the faces stopped to peer at us, their eyes rushing like searchlights. The hands flattened against the panes, framed heads, and left red prints.
"The villagers broke in the front and the back doors at the same time, even though we had not locked the doors against them. Their knives dripped with the blood of our animals. They smeared blood on the doors and walls. One woman swung a chicken, whose throat she had slit, splattering blood in red arcs about her. We stood together in the middle of our house, in the family hall with the pictures and tables of the ancestors around us, and looked straight ahead.
"At that time the house had only two wings. When the men came back, we would build two more to enclose our courtyard and a third one to begin a second courtyard. The villagers pushed through both wings, even your grandparents' rooms, to find your aunt's, which was also mine until the men returned. From this room a new wing for one of the younger families would grew. They ripped up her clothes and shoes and broke her combs, grinding them underfoot. They tore her work from the loom. They scattered the cooking fire and rolled the new weaving in it. We could hear them in the kitchen breaking our bowls and banging the pots. They overturned the great waist-high earthenware jugs; duck eggs, pickled fruits, vegetables burst out and mixed in acrid torrents. The old woman from the next field swept a broom through the air and loosed the spirits-of-the- broom over our heads. `Pig.' `Ghost.' `Pig,' they "When they left, they took sugar and granges to bless themselves. They cut pieces from the dead animals. Some of them took bowls that were not broken and clothes that were not torn. Afterward we swept up the rice and sewed it back up into sacks. But the smells from the spilled preserves lasted. Your aunt gave birth in the pigsty that night. The next morning when I went for the water, I found her and the baby plugging up the family well.
"Don't let your father know that I told you. He denies her. Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don't humiliate us. You wouldn't like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful."
Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strength to establish realities. Those in the emigrant generations who could not reassert brute survival died young and far from home. Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.