The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Maxine Hong Kingston

Sep 2010 · Vintage

About this ebook

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American. • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER

“A classic, for a reason.” —Celeste Ng, bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts, via Twitter

As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother’s tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston’s sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family’s past and her own present.

Ratings and reviews

Good book read it in a high school English class. I found the authors search for identity impactful and relatable to my own struggles as a teenager and human being. Though I was at times envious of the rich history of myth and culture she had in her grasp to explore with. I feel like the blending of reality and fantasy mirrors the ephemeral nature of self place and the feeling of belonging.

Maxine Hong Kingston seems to struggle in articulating her search for identity as a Chinese-American woman. Her writing is very engaging, but her tone sometimes comes across as exploitative of her demographic. The line between fiction and non-fiction is deliberately blurred as literary device. I read it for an assignment, but I highly recommend it for leisure as well.

This is an amazing book. While it may be boring at times it teaches you about family and struggles that Maxine and her family face upon moving to America.

About the author

Maxine Hong Kingston is the author of The Woman Warrior, China Men, and The Fifth Book of Peace, among other works. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. She worked for many years as a senior lecturer in creative writing at UC Berkeley. Kingston lives in Oakland, California.