The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

as expected

As described

I appreciate the writing style

In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston dives deep into the cultural intersection of Chinese and Western culture. Told through old traditional tales and her own experiences, the book is insightful, passionate and ageless.

Bellissimo libro! Super consigliato! Inglese non semplicissimo per dei principianti ma facilmente intuibile! Un libro per le donne ma che dovrebbe essere letto da tutti !

Kingston writes with a very nice style, and I love the way she compares her story with Chinese legends. The view of an immigrated girl in the United States is really amazing, and interesting.

The Woman Warrior was authored by Maxine Hong Kingston, a first generation Chinese immigrant, and published in 1976. This book can be understood in the historical context of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and the 1949 Communist Takeover of China. The May Fourth Movement influenced a new wave of Chinese novels, many featuring a first-person point of view and themes of individualism and self-examination. This new literary and cultural movement led to a shift in attitude towards the education of women. In The Woman Warrior, Kingston’s mother Brave Orchid, decides to pursue a medical education which can be understood in this historical context. However, despite her progressive education, Kingston’s mother remained a traditionalist in many aspects of her life. The May Fourth Movement of 1919 also marked the emergence of the Chinese Communist Party. In “White Tigers” Kingston briefly touches the brutal treatment of her landowning, Chinese family members. Their letters, detailing the torture and execution of her relatives, further illustrate the contrast between her childhood tales and the reality of her life in America.As a whole, I believe the rich detail and shifts between fantastical descriptions of folklore and Kingston’s reality make the Woman Warrior interesting to read but ultimately difficult to comprehend without further analysis. The book is split into five chapters, each detailing an influence on Kingston’s life whether it be a Chinese legend told by her mother or an exaggerated account of her life in America. The first part, No Name Woman, recounts the tragic death of Kingston’s paternal aunt, who was driven to suicide by her “shaming” of her community and family by having a baby out of wedlock. The second, White Tigers, is a story about the female warrior Fa Mu Lan presumably told to Kingston as a child by her mother. Shaman, the third chapter, shifts from a story about Brave Orchid’s medical education and her ghost stories to her life in the United States.At the Western Palace focuses on Kinston’s maternal aunt Moon Orchid who is pushed to seek out her husband in America but ultimately fails to rekindle her marriage. The final part, a Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe, is the most autobiographical, told from the first person point-of-view of Kingston.These powerful stories together illustrate the traditional role of women in Chinese society and Kingston’s struggle to find her own identity within those norms. The contrasting stories of Fa Mulan, her aunts, and her own life emphasize Kingston’s effort to find her own voice, both literally and figuratively. The novel’s content, as well as the passion with which Kingston writes, brings life to these stories, and ensures that they are powerfully alive on the page, making a lasting impression on the reader.