The Woman Warrior

Title: The Woman Warrior
Author: Maxine Hong Kingston
Genre: Memoir
Pages: 209
Rating (out of 5 stars): ***
Reviewed by: Ben
Description: Memoir of a Chinese-American girl who struggles to rectify her Chinese world at home with the American world around her. As her parents attempt to bring her up as a proper Chinese girl, she is also faced with the peer pressure of becoming American at school. Eventually she is forced to decide which world she is really going to live in.

Thoughts: Each section of The Woman Warrior tells a different story: some of them are fictional Chinese fables, some are from the girl's life. This gives the book a very disjointed feel, and I have to admit that I didn't really enjoy the fictional parts. They were kind of weird with lots of ghosts and dragons and such. On the other hand, I don't claim to know much about Eastern culture, and I'm sure that would have helped me out. However, the parts that were actually real were very enjoyable and well written. I also thought that the book gave an interesting view of the real culture clash that immigrants face when they move to the US. How tightly will they hold to their traditions? How much will the assimilate into America? I can see how this would be extremely difficult for both the parents, who want to hold on to the old ways, and the children who are trying to fit into the new. Overall it was a good book, but a challenging one as well.
Disclaimer: The very first section of the book tells about a girl in China who commits suicide after being ostracized from the community for adultery. There was nothing worse than PG-13 in this section, but it did make me just a little uncomfortable. The rest of the book was very clean.