SOURCE: "'Talking-Story' in The Woman Warrior: An Analysis of the Use of Folklore," in Kentucky Folklore Record, Vol. 27, No. 1-2, January-June, 1981, pp. 5-12.

In the following essay, Mitchell delineates Kingston's integration of oral storytelling into her written narrative in The Woman Warrior.

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, by Maxine Hong Kingston, is one of a number of novels that have explored various aspects of the immigrant experience in the United States. The novel is autobiographical and focuses not on those who themselves immigrated to the U.S. from China, but rather on the first generation born in this country. Through her stories the narrator draws us into her problems of growing up in an immigrant community and her struggle with various aspects of her Chinese heritage: her fear of being sold as a slave if she should return to China, her fear of ghosts...