The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (Vintage International)

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With this book, the acclaimed author created an entirely new form—an exhilarating blend of autobiography & mythology, of world & self, of hot rage & cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple & intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American. “A classic, for a reason” – Celeste Ng via Twitter As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother’s tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston’s sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths & memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family’s past & her own present.Maxine Hong Kingston is senior Lecturer for Creative Writing at the University of California, Berkeley. For her memoirs & fiction, The Woman Warrior, China Men, Tripmaster Monkey, & Hawai’i One Summer, Kingston has earned numerous awards, among them the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the PEN West Award for Fiction, an American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters Literature Award, & a National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the rare title of “Living Treasure of Hawai’i.” Her forthcoming memoir, The Fifth Book of Peace, will be available from Knopf in fall 2003. NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American. • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER “A classic, for a reason.” —Celeste Ng, bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts , via Twitter As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother’s tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston’s sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family’s past and her own present. NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With this book, the acclaimed author created an entirely new form—an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American. “A classic, for a reason” – Celeste Ng via Twitter As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother’s tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston’s sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family’s past and her own present. NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER#160; NATIONAL BESTSELLER #160;With this book, the acclaimed author created an entirely new forman exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identitiesimmigrant, female, Chinese, American.#160; A classic, for a reason Celeste Ng via Twitter As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mothers talk stories. The fierce and wily women warriors of her mothers tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingstons sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her familys past and her own present "A classic, for a reason" -- Celeste Ng via Twitter. In her award-winning book The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston created an entirely new form--an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities--immigrant, female, Chinese, American. As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother's "talk stories." The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother's tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston's sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family's past and her own present A Chinese American woman tells of the Chinese myths, family stories and events of her California childhood that have shaped her identity. The Woman Warrior is a pungent, bitter, but beautifully written memoir of growing up Chinese American in Stockton, California. Maxine Hong Kingston (China Men) distills the dire lessons of her mother's mesmerizing "talk-story" tales of a China where girls are worthless, tradition is exalted and only a strong, wily woman can scratch her way upward. The author's America is a landscape of confounding white "ghosts"--the policeman ghost, the social worker ghost--with equally rigid, but very different rules. Like the woman warrior of the title, Kingston carries the crimes against her family carved into her back by her parents in testimony to and defiance of the pain. A Chinese American woman tells of the Chinese myths, family stories and events of her California childhood that have shaped her identity. From the Trade Paperback edition