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mattdube 's review for:
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
by Maxine Hong Kingston
What can I say about a feminist classic that came out when I was five years old? Probably not too much of value or interest, really. But I wish I were around when it came out, to understand how groundbreaking it was in that moment, the way it incorporates family and Chinese myth into memoir, how it addresses questions of voice and language (was this before Gloria Anzuldua's How to Tame a Wild Tongue, or after?), how the story of mothers-and-daughters resonates with what is happening at the time.
Because reading it now, I'm stuck in this place of simultaneity: in some ways, this book makes this absolutely compelling case for the immigrant experience it presents, and in others, it's been kind of surpassed by things that have happened since. It's a great book that risks being a dead letter.... I don't think it's completely that. It's really well written and presented, and there are lots of weird comic scenes here that come off absolutely, like when Kingston's mother and aunt go to find the aunt's first husband. There's a lot of domestic comedy here that still really works. And there are also moments that go on too long-- the scene where our narrator torments a Chinese classmate, for one, is painfully protracted well past its point being clear. Maybe some of the other moments as well, like her mother's combat with a spirit at medical school? But mostly this is really good, and in the last sections entirely, I was moved even though I knew I was being asked to be moved. It's a very accomplished little book.
Because reading it now, I'm stuck in this place of simultaneity: in some ways, this book makes this absolutely compelling case for the immigrant experience it presents, and in others, it's been kind of surpassed by things that have happened since. It's a great book that risks being a dead letter.... I don't think it's completely that. It's really well written and presented, and there are lots of weird comic scenes here that come off absolutely, like when Kingston's mother and aunt go to find the aunt's first husband. There's a lot of domestic comedy here that still really works. And there are also moments that go on too long-- the scene where our narrator torments a Chinese classmate, for one, is painfully protracted well past its point being clear. Maybe some of the other moments as well, like her mother's combat with a spirit at medical school? But mostly this is really good, and in the last sections entirely, I was moved even though I knew I was being asked to be moved. It's a very accomplished little book.