In this exquisitely written book [The Woman Warrior], Maxine Hong Kingston has given us a picture of the American life of a Chinese-American woman, mediated through the stories and myths that her mother has told her about China. The interweaving of experience, legend, and history, played against the background of two totally different cultures, gives an extraordinary sense of both worlds. Yet the most important contribution of the book is the entrance into the mind and emotions of this complex and fascinating woman.

The book is never didactic. The insights are conveyed not explicitly, but rather implicitly in the web of the stories and incidents she relates….

It is the author's mother who has conveyed to her her sense of her own restricted place as a woman and at the same time told her the legends which feed her ambitions for a full, accomplishing, and contributing life of...