Writing in Borges's "Garden": The lively performances of John Barth and Maxine Hong Kingston

This thesis is a comparative study of John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, based on the imagery and theme of Borges's "forking paths." Both authors are indebted to Borges's work for providing the experimental narrative devices that made it possible for them to challenge their "ghosts." In Barth's case, he loses himself in the Funhouse, haunted by the "same old stories" (102); Kingston finds her voice in the Chinese stories and shocking images of the past. The thesis will work toward a presentation of the dramatic performances and brilliant images in Barth's Lost in the Funhouse and in Kingston's The Woman Warrior. Readers become players who surrender their conventional notions about narrative in Borges's "Garden of the Forking Paths." Fortunately, the writing of Barth and Kingston continues to keep storytelling a lively art where time and memory are the main characters.