A clear and vivid memoir that blurs the line between story and real life. Kingston is a tremendous writer - this is a must-read!

A note of some importance: The Woman Warrior is the most-taught book in university world literature classes.

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This is an absolutely beautiful book. I was made to read it in a Women's Lit class, but loved it. My Yahoo Mail signature is a quote from this book:
"Perhaps women where once so dangerous that they had to have their feet bound"

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Read this book in college - liked it so much I also got Trickster Monkey which is about the men in the family coming to America. This book is the woman's/girl's point of view - half American and half Chinese. Lot of insights on Chinese social and family structures, engrossing story - autobiographical for the author but written as fiction because it is blended with fairy tales and ghost stories.

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well-written, interesting story of what it meant to be a first generation American in California in the early part of last century. good read!

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An amazing autobiography of a Chinese woman growing up in California. Much of the story is how about finding a balance between her immigrant parents' values and her own, very different reality as a Chinese-American woman. I've read my copy several times.

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Kingston weaves a magical and poetic tale of an immigrant and her family, all told from a woman's point of view. in fact, it is the women who are central to the story; the men are there, but they hardly seem to matter. They are mere props, a convenient means of getting the women from one place to another. "The Woman Warrior" tells the story of Kingston and her mother, who worked as a doctor in China, then moved to the United States to be with her husband. Although the story is told through the lens of myth and fantasy, it conveys a clear and lasting impression of the love shared between mother and daughter. There is beauty and pain, and a sense of the struggles faced by the Chinese (who are the real people) as they try to find their way in the land of the ghosts who inhabit America. This book is truly a treasure.

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Kingston's odyssey of a "quiet" Chinese-American girl growing up with immigrant parents in a family whose ancestor ghosts shape daily habits and thoughts an ocean and world away.

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This book is difficult to get into at times, but the cultural elements that it reveals are fascinating. More than that, the stories are generally truly intriguing. There is a lot of depth here that almost seems to require at least a second reading to appreciate. There was a bit too thin of a line between story and truth, as well as generalizations and accurate representation, for me, but that is almost nitpicking. My one big issue is that the outright Chinese stories, such as the one about Fa Mulan, take up a bit too much space in the book when I am wanting to read about Kingston. Still, extremely worth reading as a whole. Many of the family stories are extremely sad, but they pulled me in nonetheless.

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I find Maxine Hong Kingston to be one of the more literary yet also readable American Chinese woman authors. This is a poetic book.

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