of Asian American literary history and a bibliography of works by and about
Kingston.
Feng Lan, “The Female Individual and the Empire: A Historicist Approach to
Mulan and Kingston’s Woman Warrior,” Comparative Literature, 55 (Summer
2003): 229–245.
Presents the evolution of the Chinese legend in an attempt to rehistoricize
Kingston’s version.
David Leiwei Li, “Can Maxine Hong Kingston Speak? The Contingency of The
Woman Warrior,” chapter 2 of Imagining the Nation: Asian American Literature
and Cultural Consent (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp.
44–62.
Discusses the “disastrous” results when the oppression of Asian and Asian Ameri-
can women is viewed only as a product of their root culture.
Jeeyun Lim, “Cutting the Tongue: Language and the Body in Kingston’s The
Woman Warrior,” MELUS, 31 (22 September 2006): 49–65.
Focusing on images of tongue cutting, addresses critics who see the novel as a
misrepresentation of the Chinese American community as abusive and barbaric.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim, ed., Approaches to Teaching Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior”
(New York: Modern Language Association, 1991).
Although geared toward teachers, includes seventeen essays in part 2, “Approaches,”
that are also useful for general readers because they provide the historical, cultural,
and literary contexts in which to study and interpret the novel.
Debra Madsen, “Chinese American Writers of the Real and the Fake: Authentic-
ity and the Twin Traditions of Life Writing,” Canadian Review of American
Studies, 36, 3 (2006): 257–271.
A thorough overview of the dispute between Kingston and Frank Chin. Madsen
also discusses their stances within the context of two distinct traditions of Chinese
writing and within the historical context of Chinese immigrant communities.
Angela Petit, “Words So Strong: Maxine Hong Kingston’s ‘No Name Woman’
Introduces Students to the Power of Words,” Journal of Adolescent and Adult
Literacy, 46 (March 2003): 482–493.
Describes the “rich reading experiences” and insights of the author’s high-school
students inspired by the novel and discusses the “classic themes of adolescence”
in the work.
Maureen Sabine, Maxine Hong Kingston’s Broken Book Life: An Intertextual Study
of The Woman Warrior and China Man (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i
Press, 2004).
Argues that feminist readings of The Woman Warrior obscures discussion of other
political and thematic issues that become obvious when the interplay between The
Woman Warrior and China Men is considered.
Diane Simmons, Maxine Hong Kingston (New York: Twayne, 1999).
Informative study of Kingston’s work through Tripmaster Monkey, providing his-
torical and biographical contexts.