"Maxine Hong Kingston made a stunning entrance on the American literary scene with the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning The Woman Warrior (1976), her "memoirs of a childhood among ghosts." An account of growing up Chinese American in Stockton, California, the book is at once an audacious feat of imaginative storytelling and a path breaking work of feminist autobiography, drawing on the myths, folktales, and family stories her mother brought over from China to make sense of a transformed life in the United States. "The Woman Warrior changed American culture," writes Hua Hsu in The New Yorker. "For those who understood where Kingston was coming from, it was encouragement that they could tell stories, too. For those who didn't, The Woman Warrior became the definitive telling of the Asian immigrant experience, at a time when there weren't many to choose from." --
adult
Maxine Hong Kingston ; Viet Thanh Nguyen, editor.
Includes bibliographical references.
National Book Award, Distinguished Contribution to American Letters for author, 2008
