The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Maxine Hong Kingston

Sep 2010 · Sold by 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

confusing as the plot jumps every chapter and in between different eras. Many people praise the book for this approach but for me, it gets really confusing and makes me reread several passages to understand what's going on.

Not a good book, text is unclear, inconcise, do not pick this up

Interesting read

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.