SOURCE: "Mother Daughter Writing and the Politics of Race and Sex in Maxine Hong Kingston's 'The Woman Warrior,'" in Asian Americans: Comparative and Global Perspectives, edited by Shirley Hune, Hyung-chan Kim, Stephen S. Fugita, and Amy Ling, Washington State University Press, 1991, pp. 225-38.

Ho is an American educator. In the following essay, she studies the interplay between mother and daughter in The Woman Warrior, and discusses how this interaction illuminates racial and gender-based concerns.

In the autobiographical novel The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, a young daughter attempts to bridge the gap among different and often conflicting cultures, generations, languages, and gender roles. She talks with a mother who tells her stories of the past and present; the stories are a complicated mixture of truths and lies by which she attempts to navigate her own life. The important factor is that mother and daughter talk-story, each...