The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

When the student said, “I had to read this book for class” ... I thought “oh no, yet another text book to read.”  Instead, as the book went along, I understood why the student enjoyed the book.  The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is a series of memoir stories by Maxine Hong Kingston that tells the story of the 20^th century experiences of Chinese-American women living in the United States, specifically in California (you know how I feel about the “left coast”) occurring after the revolution in China.  When I was looking up information on the book I also learned from the Modern Language Association that the book is among one of the most used book for university courses in the US.  The book contains five short stories which are all interconnected.     While I could go through each of the stories, I won’t… but I would say the theme throughout, is clearly the struggle of women gaining a voice.  Nowhere more aptly presented than in “At the Western Palace” – the story of two sisters, Moon Orchid and Brave Orchid.  One sister stayed back in China long after her husband abandoned her and their daughter to go to the US, and find a much younger American to be his wife (though he did provide significant monetary resources to the two).  Meanwhile Brave Orchid, who was living in the US, challenged her sister to find her husband and reunite, reminding him of his responsibilities to his first wife.  Brave Orchid did everything she could to insist Moon Orchid get her husband back to his “rightful” family!  Finally Brave Orchid succeeded and forced her sister to go to her former husband’s office (where he was a doctor), draw him out of the office under false pretense to the middle of the street, and present herself to him.  It happened… the outcome much more unexpected than Brave Orchid would have expected, her sister fell to the challenge and was threatened by her husband to leave.  The reunion was the beginning of the end for Moon Orchid, who like her name “faded into the breaking of dawn,” so much so that she ended in the sanatorium where she lost her mind after losing her soul and meaning in life.  Weak vs. strong women, how to find a voice that fits the individual and understanding how that voice can be heard, the past haunts the present, women in the old China never choose, but women in the new world will learn to choose, the confines of China suffocates you when you try and escape it to a new land….  Pretty rich heritage for the reader to learn about, for sure.   Good read!