The Woman Warrior 667kingSTon, maxinE Hong The
Woman Warrior (1975)
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among
Ghosts is Maxine Hong Kingston’s first published
book. Usually considered a memoir or an auto-
biographical novel, it received the National Book
Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and has been
extremely popular as a textbook for high school and
college classrooms. The first three chapters are based
on the stories the unnamed narrator heard from
her mother, Brave Orchid, about what happened in
China before her mother left for the United States
in 1939. The first chapter, “No Name Woman,” is
about the narrator’s forgotten aunt who transgressed
through an extramarital affair and pregnancy and
killed herself and her child to eschew a life as the
rural community’s outcast. The second chapter,
“White Tigers,” chronicles the career of a legendary
Chinese woman warrior, Fa Mu Lan, whom the nar-
rator is expected to emulate even as a young woman
living in the United States. The third chapter, “Sha-
man,” recollects the narrator’s mother’s life in China
as medical student and then successful doctor. The
last two chapters of the book, “At the Northern
Palace” and “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,”
show processes of successful or failed adaptations by
Chinese immigrants to American ways of life, with
the last chapter suggesting ways in which Chinese
traditions can be modified to inform and enrich the
lives of young Chinese Americans as well as better
their relationships to their immigrant parents. The
major themes highlighted in the novel include race/
ethnicity, gender, tradition, survival, identity, alien-
ation, coming of age, and family.
Tomoko Kuribayashi
Gender in The Woman Warrior
The gender issues in The Woman Warrior almost
exclusively concern women and reflect the novel’s
focus on intercultural conflicts experienced by Chi-
nese immigrants to the United States and their
American-born children. Kingston’s five chapters
present two possible exemplary social roles for
women as defined by mainstream pre-communist
Chinese culture: Women should be slaves and/or
good wives (note that the two can be synonymous)
or they can be women warriors, trained in traditional
martial arts for the specific purpose of avenging
their families. The patriarchal belief that women are
to be subservient because they are innately inferior is
often articulated in Kingston’s narrative in the form
of traditional sayings such as “Girls are maggots in
the rice” and “It is more profitable to raise geese than
daughters.” The first chapter of the book, “No Name
Woman,” informs the reader of the punishment
meted out to a woman in a Chinese village, actu-
ally the narrator’s paternal aunt, who got pregnant
through an extramarital affair: Her family’s house
was raided by villagers and she killed herself and her
child to avoid a lifetime of ostracism while her lover
or possible rapist got away scot-free. The narrator’s
mother, Brave Orchid, narrates this story as a warn-
ing about what can happen to the young daughter if
she fails to follow the strict rules set up for women’s
social and sexual conduct.
At the same time, Kingston’s narrative proffers
multiple stories featuring women warriors who
far surpassed men in their bravery, intellect, and
strength. One important example is Fa Mu Lan,
the legendary warrior, who went through rigorous
training in martial arts in order to avenge her fam-
ily and village against oppressive rulers. Another
major example of a heroic woman is the narrator’s
own mother who, after the deaths of her first two
children, acquired medical knowledge by attending
a school of midwifery in China. Brave Orchid also
proved to be a woman warrior as an immigrant to
the United States where she had six children well
into her forties and worked extremely hard to sup-
port her family. One possible way these two opposite
models for women’s lives—slave and warrior—can
be reconciled is how Fa Mu Lan is said to have done
it: After avenging her family and village against the
evil emperor and baron, the woman warrior will-
ingly became an obedient wife and daughter-in-law,
pledging to work hard in the field and the house
and to give birth to many sons. It must also be noted
that Fa Mu Lan had to hide her gender while in
battle since women soldiers were totally forbidden
in Chinese culture.
Traditional Chinese culture also dictates that
sexuality or individual sexual desires, both male
and female, be suppressed to protect the harmony
and well-being of the entire community; men and