Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: A Milestone in Asian American Literature

Abstract

Published in 1976, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior instantly became a field-defining work. This chapter examines how this genre-bending text, together with its long critical afterlife, has become one of the most influential pieces in Asian American literature. How has literary criticism on The Woman Warrior responded to and at the same time shaped the contours of Asian American literary studies? How does Kingston’s book speak to contemporary concerns within Asian American literature and culture? How did Kingston’s text set the terms, for better or for worse, of Asian American feminisms? Finally, should we still be reading, teaching, and studying The Woman Warrior four decades later? Looking back at The Woman Warrior and the vast field of scholarship surrounding it more than forty years later helps the reader understand some of the defining moments and questions in the now-recognizable Asian American literary archive during the course of its formation, development, and transition.