this book is OK!, 16. Mai 2003

since this book has gotten some horrible reviews on this page, i feel that i should step in and defend it.

i think that in order to read any book on any subject, one has to do some work on leaving his or her preoccupations and the thinking he or she is used to, behind. that's all reading is about. i do confess that initially, this book is a bit tough in the beginning, but once i read on i found it hard to put it away. the story maxine hong kingston tells is gripping, very interesting and sometimes even funny. i wasn't bored by it although i have read quite a number of books on the subject of chinese americans in the united startes before reading "the woman warrior". so the subject wasn't new to me but the book was still quite reveiling.

so read it if you're ready to dive into hong's world without any prejudices. if not, you're only going to feel annoyed and maybe insulted like some of the previous reviewers!

      vollkommen in ordnung!, 16. Mai 2003

Wenn man über den anfang hinaus ist, kann man eigentlich gar nicht mehr aufhören zu lesen bis man damit fertig ist, die geschichte, die maxine hong kingston erzählt ist packend, interessant und stellenweise - wie ich fand - sogar witzig. das buch regt zum nachdenken an, aber eben nur, wenn man bereit ist, sein eigenes denken in frage zu stellen oder für eine weile hinter sich zu lassen, um in die geschichte vorbehaltslos eintauchen zu können!

fazit: nicht das beste, was ich jemals gelesen habe, aber trotzdem ein sehr gutes buch, welches ich überhaupt nicht abgedroschen fand, obwohl ich zu dem thema schon mehrere bücher gelesen habe.

       this feminist book is NOT about "Chinese" culture, 3. Februar 2003

having read the low rate criticisms of the book, let me point out one thing they seem to miss: the book is emphasizedly NOT about Chinese culture, it is NOT its outdated, tacky, Orientalist portrayal! It is, rather, about Chinese American culture; and being Chinese American is something totally different from being Chinese in America. What exactly is it, though? This question is central to the understanding of the book (something which the low-rate critics failed to do). Kingston's second-generation narrator-protagonist is racial but not necessarily ethnic Chinese. Though surrounded by Chinese talk-story, myth and village life transplanted into an American Chinatown, she is culturally disoriented, can't tell Chinese 'fact' from Chinese 'fantasy.' "Chinese Americans," she asks her readers, "when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies? Her immigrant parents continue living their home culture where possible but reject theorizing about if for their Americanized "half ghost" offspring's elucidation. The narrator complains: "Never explain. How can Chinese keep any traditions at all? They don't even make you pay attention, slipping in a ceremony and clearing the table before the children notice specialness. The adults get mad, evasive, and shut up if you ask. [...] I don't see how they kept up a continuous culture for five thousand years. Maybe they didn't; maybe everyone makes it up as they go along. If we had to depend on being told, we'd have no religion, no babies, no menstruation (sex, of course, unspeakable), no death." The parents, who hold on to the aspects of their culture they like but do not explain them to their children, create around them a "ghostly" world of impenetrable cultural myths the narrator cannot fully identify with (part of them sexist traditions). The parents' maintenance of cultural secrecy, in turn, enforces their children's cultural ambiguity. It is the ensuing void in the knowledge about one's own culture, family, and ultimately self that Kingston's protagonist and hints at by rendering the important parts of her "memoir" in the subjunctive, the grammatical realm of the hypothetical and unknown, as fleshed-out hear-say and fantasy, and which she seeks to fill by turning to dictionaries, anthropological books, folk-legends, and the elaborated 'truths' of talk-stories. Sau-ling Wong rightly observes that "the 'native' in this case, having been born and raised in 'ghost country' without the benefit of explicit parental instruction in cultural practices, is barely more enlightened than an 'outsider' would be" (1992:267). Kingston's narrator says: "From the configuration of food my mother set out, we kids had to infer the holidays." Small wonder that those who read superficially will think it was Orientalist kitsch! Kingston's alleged "distortions" of, for example, the Mulan story (which she herself calls a kung-fu parody) or the supposedly invented kitsch of her aunts story are easily accessed in this context via one short quote: "Unless I see her life branching into mine, she gives me no ancestral help." Those stories are re-invented from her American position to aid her in her self-understanding as Chinese American; they are NOT just stories retold from an exotic perspective. By fleshing their stories out with details that carry meaning for her, Kingston presents her life as a textual history, in which her real-yet-imagined relatives (biological and mythological) become alter-egos, potential versions of herself or living enactments of answers to her questions. Kingston's mother, whenever she wanted to "warn [her children] about life," told them "a story to grow up on. She tested [their] strength to establish realities." Kingston tells the stories that she did grow up on, the realities she did establish - derived but different from their original. It is not authenticity, the purity of Chinese legends, or 'the truth' about female relatives or old myths Kingston investigates, but their relevance to her present situation. Under the changed cultural circumstances of China transferred into America, these new, allegedly distorted myths are "a sort of meditation on what it means to be Chinese American," and can serve as a barometer indicating newness and distance from the original source culture (Wong 268). Trying to find out who she is, and why, Kingston's narrator resorts to whichever information at hand - whether ancient legends or library research - to (in Kingston's words) "infer the dragon from the parts you can see and touch [because] dragons are so immense, [one could] never see one in its entirety" (33). Cultural stuff aside, the book is also (perhaps primarily so) a feminist work concerned with the difficult and painful process of confirming one's own strength, realizing one's relationship with the mother, and finding a voice of one's own. And it is a rather lyrical, beautifully written piece of work, an affirmation of Kingston's - and women's - experience, and our own voice.Best piece of criticism (with regard such exoticist allegations as proposed by the other reviews) is: Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. "Autobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour? Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior and the Chinese-American Autobiographical Controversy," in Multicultural Autobiography: American Lives, ed. James Robert Payne (Knoxville: University of Tennessee P., 1992) 248-71.Ein Tip für deutsche LeserInnen: Finger weg, wenn möglich, von der grauseligen deutschen Übersetzung!

      A collection of pointless, politically-correct dribble, 30. Juli 2000

In this book, Maxine Hong Kingston first attacks her Chinese culture: Chinese women are oppressed by men, mothers who have children out of wedlock are killed, and girls are hated simply for their gender. Yet she goes on to attack Western culture as well, displaying some of the racism she so despises by referring to whites as "ghosts" or "barbarians," and insinuates that Americans do all they can to submerge other cultures (remember the boss where the narrator worked)? True or not, all Kingston does in this angry, rambling, completely unorganized set of narratives is complain. She offers no solutions to the problem of discrimination in all cultures; she merely whines about her "poor-me, I-don't-fit-in, why-don't-you-feel-sorry-for-me" status. Instead of coloring her pictures all-black, a great analogy for the entire book, perhaps Kingston should dedicate her energy to something more constructive; prospective readers should do something more constructive--and entertaining--than wandering through this book!

      Sensationalist's view of Chinese culture frozen in the past, 30. Juli 2000

If you are satisfied only with a tabloid, exotic or a sensationalist's view of Chinese culture, then go ahead and read this book. Otherwise, you do yourself a favor by passing it up. I am not denying that Chinese Americans are struggling with identity problems, but the "old" China she depicts doesn't capture the kaleidoscopic complexity of the China that is fast changing and emerging. The Woman Warrior plays into the same Orientalist prejudice shared by such recent journalistic works as The Coming Conflict with China: anything that demonizes China or presents China as the exotic Other (thereby justifying the cultural superiority of the West) will have eager following. Frankly, the author has done a disservice to the Chinese American community because she fails to provide a balanced understanding of the Chinese culture with all its complexity. To those who are misled to believe that what she presents in The Woman Warrior is representative of Chinese culture, I can only suggest that you disabuse of these (mis)impressions by reading more indepth works on Chinese culture rather than regaling in such surrealistic kisch. This is postmodernism without responsibility in one of its worst incarnations. A good critical study on Maxine Hong Kingston and also Amy Tan would be Immigrant Subjectivities in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Literatures, by Sheng-mei Ma (New York: SUNY Press, 1998). Make sure you check Ma's work out if you decide to read Kingston or Tan. (I don't know Ma personally. Nor do I have anything to gain by recommending Ma's book.)