Q 01/05

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

A) Mu Guiying

B) Fa Mu Lan

C) Qin Liangyu

D) Fu Hao

Answer · why

B) Fa Mu Lan

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.

Q 02/05

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

A) The village river

B) A rice paddy

C) The family well

D) A fish pond

Answer · why

C) The family well

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

Q 03/05

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

A) Brand it with a dragon

B) Paint it with ashes

C) Bind it in silk

D) Carve words into it

Answer · why

D) Carve words into it

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.

Q 04/05

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

A) Her tongue

B) Her earlobes

C) Her hair

D) Her eyelashes

Answer · why

A) Her tongue

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 spea...

Q 05/05

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

A) Drowned ancestors

B) White Americans

C) Communist soldiers

D) Village gossips

Answer · why

B) White Americans

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.