in 2000 at Harvard University and explore her growing experimentation with
writing in verse and attempts to live a poet’s life. Kingston has been recognized
for her work. The Woman Warrior was awarded the National Book Critics Circle
Award for Nonfiction in 1976, China Men was the 1981 National Book Award
Winner for General Nonfiction, and Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2006) was
awarded the Northern California Book Award Special Award in Publishing. She
is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature.
In 1997 then-president Bill Clinton presented her with a National Humanities
Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2002 Kingston
retired from the University of California, having taught there since 1990.
The Woman Warrior, Kingston’s most popular work, was described in 1987
by poet laureate Robert Hass as “the book by a living author most widely taught
in American universities and colleges.” In part, its popularity on campuses comes
from its relevance to many different disciplines: literature, history, Asian Ameri-
can studies, women’s studies, and anthropology. Yet, this popularity also signals
the pleasure many readers have found in her engaging prose, her evocation of
the challenges posed by growing up amidst two very different cultures, and her
insistence that myth and story may have as much reality in our lives as do facts
and events. The book is divided into five interconnected stories, each featuring
a different female figure. In the first, “No Name Woman,” the narrator describes
the suicide of her paternal aunt after she gave birth to an illegitimate child. The
second, “White Tigers,” features an allegorical fantasy in which the narrator
imagines herself as a version of the legendary Chinese woman warrior, Fa Mu
Lan. “Shaman,” the third section, depicts the experiences of Brave Orchid, the
narrator’s mother, in China where she was a doctor and in the United States.
The fourth section, “At the Western Palace,” features her maternal aunt Moon
Orchid’s mental breakdown after she immigrates to the United States from
China in order to find her estranged husband. “A Song for a Barbarian Reed
Pipe,” the last, features the narrator’s childhood experiences before closing with an
image of cultural fusion: a re-telling of the story of early-third-century Chinese
poet Ts’ai Yen, who, like the narrator, learns to sing in a foreign tongue.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH
- Despite being highly acclaimed, The Woman Warrior has received criticism
centering on a debate over Kingston’s representation of Chinese and Chinese
American culture. Perhaps her most vocal critic has been playwright and nov-
elist Frank Chin, who accuses Kingston of inventing a “fake” Chinese Ameri-
can culture to appeal to white readers. Benjamin R. Tong in an 11 May 1977
article in the San Francisco Journal (“Critic of Admirer Sees Dumb Racist”)
describes Kingston as a “sell-out” who lacks any “organic connection” to Chi-
nese American history. Those on the other side of the debate include Deborah
L. Madsen, who challenges notions of cultural “authenticity” by examining dif-
ferent traditions in Chinese immigrant writing. Madsen argues that Kingston
subverts “racial authenticity” in representations that combine both Chinese
and American elements. King-kok Cheung defends Kingston against what she