Customer Reviews

The Woman Warrior (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(47)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

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 succeeds in combining her emotions with her experiences. The Woman Warrior is a fascinating book. One of the most amazing aspects of this book is Kingston's ability to show how silence is a form of communication and how it shaped her being. Her mother tells her to be silent, yet she goes against her cultural standards by talking about her aunt. This act of will on Kingston's part offers the readers her ancestry. The expectation of silence can be simplified into a symbol of oppression. As a Korean-American, I felt the emotions and understood how Kingston felt for being a stranger to a new culture. Her internal struggle to fit into two different societies is difficult. I personally recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about the experience of one Chinese-American woman. It is not the definitive story of Chinese-American women's experience, but it is a very vivid and well-written account of one woman's life. Pg. 209. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York

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.

I didn't know beans about Chinese women when a friend put this book into my hands about 20+ years ago. Talk about a revelation. The Woman Warrior preceded Amy Tan's novels by at least a decade and went on to win several awards. It's about growing up Chinese American in California's Central Valley, working in the family laundry, and having to listen to her mother's stories that were designed to scare her into "good behavior." Some of these "talk stories" depicted women as fierce and strong warriors, while at the same time they were enslaved by their culture.
This memoir is intense, mystical, introspective, and full of marvelous and unexpected twists and turns. If you haven't yet read it, now's your chance.

In the novel, The Woman Warrior, Kingston addresses several themes including the relationship of boys vs. girls in the Chinese culture, the process of naming, a warrior spirit within women, ghosts as representative of people, the symbolism of talk-stories, and the significance of a voice for speaking as well as writing. While Kingston explores these various themes, she also incorporates her own memoir and testimony. As a Chinese-American, she reveals the complex duality of an identity shaped by two cultures. As a woman, she reveals her fears and struggle to maintain her freedom, along with her desire to earn love from her Mother. As a writer, she reveals a voice she constantly silenced during her youth -- a voice which empowers not only her own identity through writing, but also acknowledges the identity and existence of an aunt who dared to be an individual.

Language provides Kingston an avenue into rebellion and strength and yet at the same time, through her language, she inevitably separates herself from her traditions and heritage. Throughout her memoir, Kingston struggles to assert her own identity and liberate her voice. "I shut my mouth, but I felt something alive tearing at my throat, bite by bite, from the inside" (200). This soreness within her throat grows with time along with the need to not only release her identity, but furthermore, to share this identity with her mother. "Maybe because I was the one with the tongue cut loose, I had grown inside me a list of over two hundred things that I had to tell my mother so that she would know the true things about me and to stop the pain in my throat" (197). Kingston needs her mother to help release the language inside her. By giving voice and language to these confessions she inevitably separates herself from her family and actualizes her individuality. To be released and to be separated from traditions become one and the same. Indeed, she learns to finds a place where ghosts cease to exist and where reality becomes a multitude of modern paraphernalia. "Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic the new way of seeing" (204). Kingston reminds readers of the power within language and the need to understand this same power. Within this understanding is the necessity to understand what we say and be careful with our words, lest they come true unintentionally. She urges women to fulfill the role of a woman warrior particularly through writing or speech, because if women do not search for strength within language then this language will most certainly be used against them.

Much to my dissapointment, I find that many people who have read Kingston's "Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Childhood Among Ghosts" do not understand the underlying theme and meaning. If you didn't like the book, that's okay. However, if you just thought that Kingston shouldn't "mess" with your mind, then you shouldn't even be reading "Woman Warrior" in the first place. "The Woman Warrior" attacks the themes of finding a place in American society and being both a Chinese-American and an American-Chinese. Kingston writing is powerful and full of vivid imagery and anecdotes that made me laugh outloud and relate her personal experiences with those of my own. Besides that point, Kingston makes a powerful statement about the empowerment of women and their ability to find a "voice" both gender-wise and culture-wise. I am glad to see that this book has made it to countless institutions of higher learning around the nation and has also made it to the "required reading" lists of many high schools in the country.

I'm an 11th grader from City High School, in Iowa City, Iowa. I was assigned to read this book, by my US Lit teacher, for our minority lit unit. When I started reading this book, I didn't think I'd like it that much. The book starts right away with the talk stories, and constantly jumps from story to story. Although these stories are intersting, and give you a lot of background on the actient Chinese traditions, and ways of life, the way the stories are told, and the gruesomenss of the some of the stories, makes the book very hard to follow at times. Despite that, it is very interesting to read about the difference between the American and Chinese cultures,and the ways that they clash. Once you get through all of the talk stories, to the stories that actually have a plot, you see how the talk stories tie into their everyday life, even when they are trying to fit into our lifestyle, and the book becomes much more interesting, not to mention easier to read. This book is full of culture, and is a wonderful way to learn about how different ehtnic groups interact together. It's definately worth reading.

Maxine Hong Kingstons masterpiece, "The Woman Warrior..." is bursting with originality and personality. While some may question the validity of the book being a true non-fictional autobiography, the story is inspiring in any genre. Tell Story and Ghosts unite to present the reader with an interal stuggle between being American and Chinese, an honor or a disgrace to the family, confomity and individuality. As the author boldly satates, "I am a Female Avenger." This book is, however, full of important symbolism that can be easily missed in reading. I suggest paying close attention to colors, ghosts, and noting the importance of each tell-story.

I enjoyed reading the fictional tale Warrior Woman by Maxine Hong Kingston. I think anyone who likes to see how other cultures live and relate to one another will enjoy this story. Readers who enjoy fantasy type stories will also enjoy this book, because it is rich in both types of story telling. After reading the novel, I can appreciate Chinese culture more, and although I usually shy away from fantasy stories and novels, the sections dealing with fantastic themes drew me in. In the story White Tigers, I was attempted to skip pages until the end of the section, but somehow I kept reading the story and I became more involved in it. When I realized the story was being told to empower Chinese women, it gave the whole fantasy a new meaning to me. Women at the time of the story held little value in Chinese society. Girls grow up, go away, and leave their aged parents, but boys were expected to stay with the parents along with their wives to care for their elderly parents.
The story No Name Woman disturbed me as I read. No name woman was the narrator's aunt. The aunt became No Name Woman after her family disowned her for committing adultery and becoming pregnant. The aunt would never name the father, so he could bear in her shame. What bothered me most about this section is not so much that the father escaped punishment, although that bothered me too, but the total lack of forgiveness from the family. Because of this total lack of family forgiveness, this young woman killed herself and her newborn. How terribly sad!
Although the Chinese society seemed to value family and a tradition, I found it highly curious that they could not speak about sex at all and they went to great lengths to avoid even family intimacy. Kingston describes how family members in China shout into each other's faces and yell at each other across the room. At mealtimes, which is a sort of intimate family time, no one talks.
I found the section At the Western Place intriguing. I am aware that there are many immigrants who come to the United States to make a better life for themselves, many times leaving families behind until they can establish themselves. When I read how Moon Orchid had been waiting for her husband for over 30 years and he never returned, instead establishing a new family in the United States, to say I was taken back, is expressing my reaction mildly. Moon Orchid did not seem to mind the arrangement though. Could it have been because she was well provided for financially without the obligation of carrying out wifely duties? Perhaps she enjoyed the prestige of being a married woman. Whatever her reasons, I felt so sorry for her after her sister Brave Orchid forced a confrontation between the estranged spouses. Moon Orchid was devastated by the encounter and was never the same afterwards. Something intangible and innocent within her was forever altered.
I would recommend that this book be read in a thoughtful and serious manner, although the narrative is by no means heavy or serious, but the characters themselves as interesting as well as being a complex mixture of clashes between their own culture and their assimilation to American culture. There are marked differences between the struggles of the young people and the struggles of the older people and how both groups try to fit into the new society while holding onto parts of traditional Chinese culture. I found The Warrior Woman a good read.

The beauty of Warrior Woman is that Kingston does not pretend to lay it out exactely how it is because it is impossible to do so. What Kingston provides is her own representation of her cultural heritage and her own interpretation of what it was like for HER to grow up a female Chinese American. Each chapter is about a different warrior woman (except for one) because even though she struggled with her identity growing up, it was the warrior women surrounding her that she ultimately drew her strength from. This is a wonderfully written book that is at once angry and poetic. Kingston provides the reader with a look at one woman's interpretation of her cultural identity that does not pretend to be factual, (which is a truer rendering of life and identity).

I read this book almost 20 years ago as an assigned text in a summer enrichment program during high school. Though I never re-read it, I still remember enough about it and the discussions our class had to respond to some of the reviewers.

I believe that reading the reviews gives you a pretty good idea of what life was like for Maxine- accepted neither by those who had seen China nor by those who were not of Chinese descent. Complete and utter disorientation- hence, the very nature of how the book was written. It was written exactly as it was in order to give the reader the actual experience of being disoriented at all times. At home in no culture and no time. Yes, the book is tough to get through. But that is the point.

The older I get the more I appreciate the struggles of others. It is not enough to understand our own lives- we must seek to understand the paths that led others into our lives, as well. I recommend this book highly to anyone with a mind open to understanding another person's life. Those who feel that only their own interpretation of reality is valid should not bother picking up the book.