Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Kingston, Maxine Hong - Kingston’s Works

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Kingston’s Works

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. New York: Knopf, 1976.

Kingston’s first book catapulted her from almost complete obscurity to sudden fame as the best-known Asian American writer of the late twentieth century. The book was variously praised as a feminist master-piece and as a groundbreaking work of ethnic or multicultural literature. The narrative is divided into five interconnected stories: “No Name Woman,” “White Tigers,” “Shaman,” “At the Western Palace,” and “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe.” Each focuses upon a feminine figure—a female alter ego for the narrator. The stories are linked together by the authorial voice of Kingston as she recalls events from her childhood and the stories her mother, Brave Orchid, used to tell her. The stories are also connected by the dominant presence of Brave Orchid, whose stories, leg-ends, and histories confront Kingston with an array of...

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1. Introduction
2. About Maxine Hong Kingston
3. Kingston At Work
4. Kingston’s Era
5. Kingston’s Works
6. Kingston On Kingston
7. Kingston As Studied
8. Study Questions
9. Bibliography
10. Copyright

1. Maxine Hong Kingston