Mochi Magazine: In “The Woman Warrior,” you wrote, “Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.” How did you negotiate between the Asian and American aspects of your identity? What advice do you have for girls dealing with cultural identity issues?

Maxine Hong Kingston: The main task during our youth is to build the self. We do that by creating our values and our ethics. That is, we discover clearly what we value in our inherited cultures. We multi-cultural people have much to choose from. And we make a code of ethics that helps us be brave as we negotiate society. Strong in values and ethics, we don’t distort ourselves to fit into the milieu.

We change the world – and the family – with our very presence.

MM: Both you and Amy Tan wrote extensively about mother-daughter relationships, particularly of the haunted past world the mothers left behind in China. Why was it important for you to tell your mother’s stories?

MHK: Mother represents all of the known world. Each of us needs to come to terms with our own specific mother, and all of life. One needs to understand, interact, reconcile with, and possibly transform life conditions, including one’s relationship with Mom. My own mother was the most dynamic, energetic, interesting person I’ve known. As a writer, I was lucky to have her stories.

MM: Asian American presence in American culture, media, and politics has come a long way since you first published in 1970s. Looking back, what do you think were the movements that spurred the change and what do you believe still needs to needs to be accomplished?

MHK: The Civil Rights movement. The Feminist movement. The American wars in Asia. Literary movements, such as the Beats, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. The pride movements, which led to the existential creation of Asian and Pacific Islander America. The next immediate thing to accomplish is the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

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The story is written from a first-person perspective, separated into five independent sections. Each chapter exists as its own story, a piece of a mosaic. The novel begins with the narrator’s (presumably Kingston’s) childhood fantasy of a shunned aunt’s illegitimate pregnancy and later suicide. On that dark, almost morbid note, the novel transcends into a lyrical dream-like sequence set in ancient China. The voice shifts to that of the legendary heroine, Fa Mulan, who seeks revenge and justice for her parents. Unlike the Disney caricature, Kingston’s Mulan is a hardened vigilante, capable of spilling blood. For the third and fourth chapters, we follow the story of Brave Orchid, Kingston’s mother, from her fearless training as a doctor and to her sister Moon Orchid’s abandonment by her husband. It is as if the chapters alternate between strong, independent characters and dependent, hopeless ones. In the end, the book comes full circle in the last chapter, “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” as the narrator recounts a childhood memory of tormenting a silent classmate.

Contrary to its empowering title, what is most striking about Woman Warrior is not the valor of Mulan or Brave Orchid, but the silence of the weak characters that bookend them. Kingston’s aunt, Moon Orchid, and the quiet schoolgirl remain etched in my mind because they seem to represent a muted suffering of an entire identity. Their lack of voice and consequential tragedy is haunting, as if they are a silent parable of what happen if others follow their same path.

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