40 Fun Facts About The Woman Warrior

In 'White Tigers' in The Woman Warrior, which legendary swordswoman does Kingston imagine herself becoming?

Fa Mu Lan is better known in the West as Mulan, and Kingston's retelling helped popularise the legend there two decades before Disney's animated film.

In The Woman Warrior, where does the disgraced No Name Woman drown herself and her newborn baby?

The family well turns her into what Chinese tradition fears most, a drowned ghost who waits by the water to pull in a substitute.

In 'White Tigers' in The Woman Warrior, what do the swordswoman's parents do to her back before she goes to war?

Carve words into it: the cuts list every wrong done to the family, so the swordswoman carries her village's grievances into battle on her own skin.

In The Woman Warrior, what does Brave Orchid say she cut when the narrator was a baby?

Her tongue: Brave Orchid sliced the membrane underneath so that her daughter would never be tongue-tied, yet the girl grew up painfully shy about speaking.

In The Woman Warrior, whom does Brave Orchid teach her children to call 'ghosts'?

White Americans get a ghost name for every job, from Taxi Ghosts to Police Ghosts, which is why the subtitle recalls a girlhood among ghosts.

What kind of family business do the narrator's immigrant parents run in The Woman Warrior?

A laundry: the man who opened it had been a village scholar and teacher in China, but in America he could find only menial work before owning a business.

In The Woman Warrior, where does Moon Orchid end her days after her husband rejects her?

A mental asylum is the one place Moon Orchid seems happier; by then she is convinced that everyone she sees is plotting to kill her.

What did the silent young narrator of The Woman Warrior cover her school paintings with for three years?

Black paint so alarmed her teachers that they feared for her sanity; she thought of the black as stage curtains about to rise on a show.

Whose place in the army does the swordswoman take in the 'White Tigers' chapter of The Woman Warrior?

Her father's place: she dresses as a man to lead the army, and for a time her husband joins her and they have a baby in the middle of the campaign.

To which city do Brave Orchid and Moon Orchid drive to confront Moon Orchid's husband in 'At the Western Palace'?

Los Angeles is where he has a new, younger wife who knows nothing about Moon Orchid; he offers to keep sending money but refuses to acknowledge her.

In which California city did the narrator of The Woman Warrior grow up, as Maxine Hong Kingston herself did?

Stockton is where Kingston was born in 1940, the eldest of six American-born children; two older siblings had died in China before her mother emigrated.

The Woman Warrior closes with the story of which ancient Chinese poet, held captive for years by nomads?

Ts'ai Yen could not talk with her captors until she sang along to their reed pipes, and she brought that song back to her own people when she was finally returned.

As a student in China, which spirit does Brave Orchid fight overnight in a haunted room in The Woman Warrior?

Sitting Ghost presses down on her and nearly smothers her, but she outlasts it and at dawn leads her classmates in a ritual to purge the room.

Before emigrating, Brave Orchid of The Woman Warrior trained in China for which profession?

Doctor and midwife: after ten years of waiting for her husband she spent her savings on two years of study, then returned to her village a respected healer.

How is Moon Orchid's husband lured down to the car in 'At the Western Palace' in The Woman Warrior?

A faked emergency: Brave Orchid sends her son up to say that a woman has hurt her leg, and the husband hurries down to find the wife he left behind.

'At the Western Palace' is the only chapter of The Woman Warrior narrated from which point of view?

Third person appears nowhere else in the book; Kingston was not there, and the next chapter admits she heard the story from a sister, who heard it from their brother.

From which city does Moon Orchid fly to San Francisco at the start of 'At the Western Palace'?

Hong Kong is where Moon Orchid had lived comfortably on the money her husband sent, waiting thirty years for an invitation to America that never came.

In 'At the Western Palace', what job does the second wife of Moon Orchid's husband hold in his office?

Nurse: Brave Orchid goes up to the office alone and discovers that the beautiful young woman working there is the wife who replaced her sister.

After villagers wreck her family's house, where does No Name Woman give birth in The Woman Warrior?

A pigsty reflects an old belief: jealous gods would not bother to steal a baby born among pigs, and newborns were even called pigs to fool them.

The Woman Warrior opens with Brave Orchid giving her daughter which instruction about No Name Woman?

Never repeat the story, her mother warns, offering it only as a caution against disgrace; Kingston's answer was to open her first book with it.

In 'White Tigers' in The Woman Warrior, what does the young girl follow up into the mountains?

A bird leads her through brambles and over rocks to the summit; Kingston later notes bitterly that birds also lured her uncle to his death in Communist China.

Who trains the swordswoman in martial arts for fifteen years in 'White Tigers' in The Woman Warrior?

An old couple take her in on a mountaintop and offer a choice: go home to pull sweet potatoes with her family, or stay and learn to avenge her village.

In The Woman Warrior's 'White Tigers', which animal leaps into the fire to feed the starving swordswoman?

A rabbit hops up to her fire and jumps in of its own accord, a gift of meat the famished trainee accepts only after refusing to kill it herself.

In 'White Tigers' in The Woman Warrior, what object lets the swordswoman in training watch her distant family?

A water gourd shows her everything at home, including her own wedding: her parents marry her to a childhood friend while she is still away.

After her army beheads the emperor in 'White Tigers' in The Woman Warrior, whom does the swordswoman enthrone?

A peasant becomes emperor, a change from the old ballad, in which the heroine fights loyally for the emperor and then simply goes home.

In The Woman Warrior, which insult does the grandfather of Kingston's cousins use for the family's girls?

Maggots is his word for the girls, while the boys' birthdays earn big celebrations and gifts such as bicycles.

Which crop does Brave Orchid pick in California fields to add to the family income in The Woman Warrior?

Tomatoes were one of several jobs: she also worked in a cannery and as a maid, a long fall from the respected position she had held in her village.

What was Maxine Hong Kingston's original title for The Woman Warrior, dropped at her publisher's urging?

Gold Mountain Stories sounded like a short-story collection, which publishers avoid; Kingston disliked the new title too, calling herself a pacifist.

In her final shouting match with Brave Orchid in The Woman Warrior, what does the narrator say she plans to do?

Go to college, she shouts, adding that her mother cannot stop her from talking; Brave Orchid, a champion talker herself, yells right back.

The Woman Warrior won the National Book Critics Circle Award in which category?

Nonfiction is how the book was published and prized, though Kingston herself says it combines truth and fiction in an autobiographical form.

Which Chinese American writer attacked The Woman Warrior, calling Maxine Hong Kingston 'a fake'?

Frank Chin accused her of serving readers exaggerated American stereotypes of Chinese people; in 1982 Kingston answered her critics in an essay on cultural misreadings.

In which US state was Maxine Hong Kingston living when she finished writing The Woman Warrior?

Hawaii was Kingston's home for seventeen years; she moved there after teaching high school in California and took a string of teaching jobs.

Which 1980 book did Maxine Hong Kingston write as a companion volume to The Woman Warrior?

China Men tells the stories of the men in her family; Kingston called the two volumes one big book because she wrote them at the same time.

What happens to the narrator of The Woman Warrior soon after she torments a silent classmate?

She falls mysteriously ill and spends eighteen months in bed at home, an illness she comes to see as payment for her cruelty.

Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior, was named after a blonde regular at what business?

A gambling house, an illegal one, supplied the name: Maxine was a blonde customer there whose luck never seemed to run out.

Which Chinese language, spoken in Kingston's immigrant community, shapes the English of The Woman Warrior?

Cantonese rhythms run through her sentences: Kingston has said she sometimes speaks Chinese aloud while typing in English to fuse the two.

What term does The Woman Warrior use for Brave Orchid's spoken mix of myth, family history and warning?

Talk-story lulled the children to sleep with legends, family history and ghosts; Kingston's feat was carrying that oral custom into written prose.

In The Woman Warrior, why did No Name Woman's village hold 'hurry-up weddings' before its young men sailed for America?

To make sure they came back: a wife waiting at home tied each emigrant to the village and to his place in Chinese society.

In 'At the Western Palace', which habit of Moon Orchid's drives Brave Orchid's grown children to distraction?

Describing their every move aloud, she trails her nieces and nephews through the house each evening like a running commentary.

Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior, studied and later taught at which university?

UC Berkeley admitted her as an engineering student before she switched to English; she graduated in 1962 and returned years later as a professor.