The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts in Read a book from each country

Feb 02, 2021 Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship rated it liked it

Shelves: asian-american, classics, memoirs, 3-stars, china, united-states

Those who know my taste won’t be surprised by my ambivalence about this book; I’m skeptical of the role of imaginative storytelling in memoir and this one, while probably best categorized as memoir, spends more pages on imagination than actual recounting of the author’s life. It’s considered something of a modern classic, perhaps for being one of if not the first Asian-American book incorporated into the academic canon, and it is well-written and the author displays good storytelling skills, to Those who know my taste won’t be surprised by my ambivalence about this book; I’m skeptical of the role of imaginative storytelling in memoir and this one, while probably best categorized as memoir, spends more pages on imagination than actual recounting of the author’s life. It’s considered something of a modern classic, perhaps for being one of if not the first Asian-American book incorporated into the academic canon, and it is well-written and the author displays good storytelling skills, to the point that I’d be reading along thinking this was pretty good and only later realize wait a minute, it’s mostly made up!

Of the book’s five sections, the first and shortest consists of a story the author’s mother told her about a dead aunt, and the author’s speculation about the aunt’s life. The second section is a childhood fantasy? folk tale? short story retelling the Mulan legend? all of the above? The third is about her mother’s life as a medical student and doctor in China before the author’s birth. The fourth is about an aunt’s arrival in the U.S. decades later, and is told from the points-of-view of the mother and aunt, but the author reveals at the beginning of the fifth section (the only one focused on her own life) that she invented much of it based on some bare-bones facts gleaned thirdhand. So I don’t know. It’s an interesting way to construct a book and the author is clearly a good writer, but for me there’s still an element of “what did I just read?”

Also, the author takes aim at sexism in China and the Chinese-American community, while leaving out how her own parents handled this legacy in raising their kids, which is strange to me. I’m guessing they weren’t so bad since her ugly stories all feature other people, but it’s also possible she didn’t want to trash her relationships with them by publishing all that. Who knows. Meanwhile, some of the stories of life in China are so over-the-top I couldn’t help wondering whether they’re true—of course plenty of things happen everywhere in the world that outsiders would consider over-the-top, but with a book so little concerned with factual truth (plus, all these stories are secondhand at best), skepticism is natural.

I can see why many appreciate this book, it certainly challenges ideas of what a memoir should be, and there wasn’t nearly as much immigrant literature being published in the 1970s as there is now. I did find the stories of the author and her family interesting. Not the sort of memoir I was expecting, but it’s a quick read all the same. ...more

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