The Woman Warrior

By Maxine Hong Kingston

Book Overview

'A strange, enchanting book . . . unbeatable' - The Guardian

'Dizzying, elemental' - John Leonard, The New York Times

A classic memoir set during the Chinese revolution of the 1940s and inspired by folklore, providing a unique insight into the life of an immigrant in America.

Throughout her childhood, Maxine Hong Kingston listened to her mother's mesmerizing tales of a China where girls are worthless, tradition is exalted and only a strong, wily woman can scratch her way upwards. Growing up in a changing America, surrounded by Chinese myth and memory, this is her story of two cultures and one trenchant, lyrical journey into womanhood.

Complex and beautiful, angry and adoring, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior is a seminal piece of writing about emigration and identity. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976 and is widely hailed as a feminist classic.

Part of the Picador Collection.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1035063689
• ISBN13: 9781035063680
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: Picador UK
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.0" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up

Customer Reviews

Amazing!

I really enjoyed this book! I recommend reading it!

Stunning & Poignant

I read this book for a Feminist Criticism course and thoroughly enjoyed it. Kingston successfully weaves together a patchwork of Chinese myth, personal anecdotes, and the all-too-real experience of children of immigrants to find their place in life. Kingston's skill of storytelling truly brings you into the story.

A book you can fall in love with

I came across this book several years ago and immediately fell under its spell. I liked it so much that I had to re-read it again and again in order to decipher the new layers the book revealed with each occasion. I like the book so much, that I've decided to write a paper on it but unfortunately there are only a few, who offer quality interpretation on this magnificient book that could help me. Thus, if anyone, who has some ideas, would help me out on this would be VERY welcomed...

Growing up Chinese in America

Maxine Hong Kingston, in this book and its companion, China Men, gives us one of the very best depictions of what it means to be a second generation inhabitant of this land when your parents have come from a totally alien culture. And is any culture more alien to us than that of China before the revolution? Woman Warrior works on a lot of levels. First, it is beautifully written wit evocative language and dreamlike scenes that evoke sequentially horror, amusement, wonder and finally recognition, of both ourselves and the "other". I like books that give me information and a sense of understanding of cultures and peoples not my own, that speak to our common humanity. Mrs. Kingston's writings do all those things. Excellent book. wfh

An Excellent Tale of Chinese-American Life in the 1940's

When I read The Woman Warrior, I was amazed by the quality of the detail with which Maxine Hong Kingston describes life in San Francisco's China Town during the 1940's. As she tells the story of her life, she simultaneously integrates old myths into her story. The story is truly moving. It is very easy to read, and gives the reader a flavor of Chinese culture. Definately one of the better books that I read last year.

Challenging, rewarding read

This is a remarkably intelligent, personal account of success, failure, frustration, and identity. No, the writing and structure are not straightforward, and yes, some of the plotline may be disturbing. But this is ultimately an intellectually rewarding read, and a personally emotionally moving experience.The anti-feminist backlash this novel seems to elicit (e.g., on this review page) should be testimony to how provocative it is, and how many assumptions it can challenge.As for it being a misrepresentation of Chinese culture, well, it's a subjective account. It's the culture through Maxine's eyes (and her family's eyes); it is not meant to be an objective anthropological study. And I did not find it at all exoticizing. In fact, it's a shame that MHK often gets mentioned in the same sentence as Amy Tan -- beyond the superficial similarity of both being Asian-American women, they have little in common. MHK does none of the silly exoticization that AT does, and at least to me, does not engage in the "Asians must be rescued by Western culture" ideology of AT. This is ultimately a personal, autobiographical account, that is neither judgmental nor self-pitying.

Crossing the Line

The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, captures readers with her own interpretation of what it was like to grow up as a female Chinese American. As a little girl, she came to America with her family. Despite being in a new country, she had to deal with the old traditions from her homeland. Kingston hears different legends which she pieces together to create her woman warrior. It becomes her source of strength in a society that rejected both her sex as well as her race. The book, divided into five interwoven stories, is at times confusing as it jumps around. Nevertheless she does a great job explaining her life while growing up. The first story, called "No Name Woman," tells of her paternal aunt who bears a child out of wedlock and is harried by the villagers and by her family into drowning herself. The family now punishes this taboo-breaker by never speaking about her and by denying her name. However, Kingston breaks the family silence by writing about this rebel whom she calls "my forebear." The next story is called "White Tigers." It is a myth about a heroine named Fa Mu Lan, who fights in place of her father and saves her village. This story became the Disney movie, Mulan. "Sharman" is a story of Kingston's mother. It explores what it was like to study as a woman to become a doctor in China. "At the Western Palace" is about Kingston's aunt who comes to America and discovers that her husband has remarried in America. Finally, the last story, "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe" is about Kingston's own experience in America when she first arrived. She explains what it was like to be a newcomer in a strange culture. Kingston constantly mentions that her friends and she are ghosts because they are American. All of the people who surround her family are ghosts, except for the Chinese people who live on the Gold Mountain, a section of Chinatown in San Francisco. Kingston feels like a ghost herself, " .... We had been born among ghosts, were taught by ghosts, and were ourselves ghost-like. The Americans call us a kind of ghosts" (p.183). The interpretation of what ghosts mean in this book is difficult to figure out. It could show how some people view a person from a different culture with ignorance as if she doesn't exist. Kingston's The Woman Warrior has some similarities with The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. First of all, both stories are written by Chinese American authors about their cultural heritage. Both novels deal with major concerns faced by Chinese American women. Living with their traditional culture in American society, Chinese-American women suffer problems of cultural conflicts. However, there are differences that make each work distinct. The Joy Luck Club is fiction and is not personal. It is also more likely to be read for pleasure. The Woman Warrior portrays a first hand view of the cultural differences between the United States and China. Also, Kingston succe