First published 1993
This collection presents key passages from Maxine Hong Kingston's two celebrated works. The Woman Warrior sections follow Kingston as she navigates the gap between her Chinese heritage and American upbringing. She wrestles with her mother's talk-stories about female warriors and ghosts, trying to separate truth from myth. The stories blur the line between her family's real history and the legends that shaped her understanding of what it means to be a Chinese woman in America. The China Men portions trace the journeys of Chinese men who came to build railroads and work in America, often leaving families behind. Kingston reconstructs their experiences through fragments of memory and imagination. She confronts the silence surrounding these men's struggles and sacrifices. The selected passages capture her effort to reclaim stories that official histories ignored or distorted.
Genres: american-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir, 21st-century, asian-american, chinese-literature
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: America, China
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
Library Binding · Bt Bound