A review of The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

For form matching theme: Until 2022, I had never heard of The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston (Picador, 2015), a book that won the National Book Critics Circle Award when it was originally published in the States (Vintage, 1976). I am thankful that committee did not play it safe. This hybrid memoir-folktale is still extraordinary now. The author explains, in China, all women must be slaves, wives, or swordswomen – and she will be the latter. Weaving her Chinese American youth with the lyrical life stories of her mother, her aunts, and Mulan, the author tests our strength to establish realities. Despite the lapping shifts of time, space, and narrator, the song of a heroine carries throughout.