by Maxine Hong Kingston
In the world of memoirs, this one was a little difficult for me to rate. I was confused for a decent portion of it, not sure whether this was fiction or nonfiction at times. I had chosen it as part of the Read Harder Challenge for this year, task 17: read a classic by a woman of color. I suppose I c...
What drew me to this book was a description of the way the author weaves Chinese folklore into her own story; although I am not very familiar with Chinese mythology, I do appreciate writing that makes use of the universal truth of story, and that is precisely what this book does.Although the book is...
The Daily Poet is a marvelous set of prompts and ideas for writing -- one for each day of the year! What I love the most about reading these poetic prompts are the little bits of knowledge and insight that open creative doors for me. I learned little things -- little insightful fun things -- about S...
The Swordswoman of Words 'The Woman Warrior' is Maxine Hong Kingston's own story of growing up Chinese-American, an irreconcilable position for her as the two cultures would seemingly clash, unable to provide her with a stable sense of identity. She grew up confused by the ideas and behavior of he...
How could I not love a book titled The Woman Warrior? I read this for a women's literature class in college, probably around 1995. It's part memoir, part folklore -- weaving together stories from Kingston's family, from ancient China, and from her life into a larger narrative about what the lives of...
How odd that Maxine Hong Kingston writes, on the subject of the crippling self-consciousness that left her silent in American schools as a child, and still remains, "A dumbness—a shame—still cracks my voice in two....It spoils my day with self-disgust when I hear my broken voice come skittering out ...
I love the way Kingston talks about stories and metaphors and Chinese culture, but the second half of the book is all about old women freaking out in American culture and becoming useless and for some reason I can't deal with that. It's my least favorite part of Amy Tan's work as well.
phantasmogoric personal narrative, feminist tract, history lesson, compulsory reading for college freshmen.
Read this book twice during my university career, first for a course on women in fiction with Debbie Yaffe, my favourite prof of all time, and then again in American Literature.
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