THE WOMAN WARRIOR
Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
By Maxine Hong Kingston
Vintage International. 209 pp. $10

Reviewed by Xian Ke
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

I started reading Woman Warrior with the expectation of being able to relate to Maxine Hong Kingston's account of her youth. After all, I am also a first-generation immigrant from China. Although my personal experiences certainly gave me a different and unique perspective, I came away from the book still full of curiosity at the unusual episodes and stories that made up Kingston's girlhood. One does not need to be an immigrant to be able to understand and be inspired by the powerful stories.

Above all, Woman Warrior is a fascinating exploration into the conflicting emotions that come with growing up in a traditional Chinese home amid the American society. With the subtitle "Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts," Kingston is not merely alluding to the spiritual ghosts that her mother and other Chinese strongly believe in. To her mother, America seemed like a savage "wilderness" of "barbarians" and "ghosts". Kingston, meanwhile, was torn between the two drastically different worlds she encountered and struggled to make sense of both.

The first two chapters of Kingston's collection of memories are filled with fantasies and dream sequences, a little confusing at first but nevertheless worth a closer analysis. Here, we are literally able to venture into Kingston's mind and see the degree to which Kingston's reality and imagination were intermingled. The "talk-stories" that her mother told every night as Kingston and her siblings fell asleep further contributed to her confusion of identity. It got so that Kingston "couldn't tell where the stories left off and the dreams began." The writing here, as with the entire book, is frank - certainly not for the faint-hearted. She doesn't spare us the less-appealing ideas and ways of her native village in China or the sometimes-graphic details in her mother's "talk-stories". For those who have seen the Disney version of Mulan, Kingston's version is full of irony and gives far more insight into the traditional ideas of honor and duty for a female.

Compared to these stories of heroism and honor, Kingston's own achievements seem insignificant. Yet, we soon see that it really does take the courage and fortitude of a warrior woman to venture into an unfamiliar culture and start life anew. Kingston's final message seems to be one of reconciliation of cultures and ideals. Her family no longer had definite ties to China after relinquishing ownership of the family farm, and going back to the traditions of her old village now that the kids have been Americanized is impossible. However, Kingston believes that her family sense of place had not been lost, and things have "translated well": "We belong to the planet now, Mama...wherever we happen to be standing, why, that spot belongs to us as much as any other spot." And so it is also true of this book. While Kingston's childhood experiences may not be typical of the experiences of all immigrants or of all Chinese in America, these stories have universal appeal.