Product Description

'A brilliant memoir...it is about being Chinese in the way A Portrait of the Artist is about being Irish; it is an investigation of soul, not landscape, its sources are dream and memory, myth and desire; its crises are the crises of a heart in exile from roots that bind and terrorize it...Maxine Hong Kingston writes with bitter and relentless love. Her voice, now, is as clear as the voice of Ts'ai Yen, who sang her sad, angry songs of China to the barbarians. It is as fierce as a warrior's voice, and as eloquent as any artist's' Jane Kramer, New York Times Book Review 'This is a delightful book...tells more than i ever imagined about the strangeness of being Chinese and a woman; it also gives a superb account of what it's like simply to be alive' Victoria Radin, New Society 'A strange, enchanting book...As a manual of self- discovery through the channels and terrors of one's own rejected communal memory, it is unbeatable' Guardian 'As a dream - of the "female avenger" - it is dizzying, elemental a poem turned into a sword...reimagining the past with such dark beauty, such precision and anger that you feel you have saddled the Tao dragon and see all through the fiery eye of God' John Leonard, New York Times 'A book of fierce clarity and orginality' Newsweek

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57319 in Books
• Published on: 1981-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 186 pages

Customer Reviews

The voice of a Chinese American woman
This book is about the growth of a Chinese girl in America, whose development from girlhood to womanhood is shaped by the stories and voices of her female forebears -- her mother, aunts, and historical and legendary Chinese figures such as Fa Mu Lan and Ts'ai Yen (anyone who's familiar with the original Fa Mu Lan story might find Kingston's version confusing though). The book is no ordinary autobiography as Kingston imaginatively mixes autobiographical details with fictional and imaginative elements to portray her unique experience of growing up as a Chinese American girl/woman. The writer's intention to articulate a voice amid a double-marginalised situation (both racially and sexually) is evident and the book is an essential read for anyone interested in Chinese American literature.

Impenetrable
Despite being half Chinese myself and having shelves of Chinese literature, I have now twice tried to get through this book and twice failed. She tells dark stories told to her by her mother and relates them to her life - long convoluted fairy stories of Mu Lan and half-told stories of her dead aunt. Half-way through there is little of her modern-day life at all, thought this is supposed to be autobiographicial, although glancing further on in the book there seems at least to be more.

This book has won several awards, and Time even called it "one of the books of the decade", but I think this is because it was written at a time (1977) when there was precious little writing coming out of or about China, and also about the experience of being a Chinese immigrant. Now we have a slew of writers both iin China and outside, writing about the Chinese-American experience and the stories of how tough it was to be a girl in China.

A masterpiece
A wonder to behold. This book mixes the autobiographical genre with myth and fantasy, everyday language with elegant prose, humor and tragedy. And perhaps the most amazing thing about it is that for all its assessable literary qualities, The Woman Warrior is a poignant personal story that will touch most readers and stay with them for a long time.