The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (Vintage International)

€œA classic, for a reason€ €“ Celeste Ng via Twitter

In her award-winning book The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston created an entirely new form€"an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities€"immigrant, female, Chinese, American. 

As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother€s €œtalk stories.€ The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother€s tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston€s sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family€s past and her own present.