The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
1976 • 243 pages
Ratings13
Average rating3.2
15
Ratings13
Average rating3.2
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is Kingston's disturbing and fiercely beautiful account of growing up Chinese-American in California. The young Kingston lives in two worlds: the America to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother's "talk stories." Her mother tells her traditional tales of strong, wily women warriors - tales that clash puzzlingly with the real oppression of women. Kingston learns to fill in the mystifying spaces in her mother's stories with stories of her own, engaging her family's past and her own present with anger, imagination, and dazzling passion.
Reviews with the most likes.
This book took me FOREVER to read. I feel guilty giving it two stars, because I feel that in large part, my experience with it was me being an inattentive reader. Which begs the question...is that a failing of the book, or me just attempting to read it at a place where I wasn't truly ready or willing to absorb it? There are certainly many beautiful and moving parts–Hong Kingston does not shy away from the often disturbing, shaming, and hurtful parts of being a young female Chinese-American. I'd venture a guess that a more patient reader than I would truly enjoy its unfolding.
