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Date
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Woman Warrior Reading Questions
Directions: Complete the following questions as you read Maxine Hong Kingston’s, Woman Warrior.
Answer the questions thoroughly in two to three sentences. Please construct your responses on a
separate piece of paper, either typed or handwritten.
No Name Woman
1.Why does Kingston's mother tell her the story of her aunt? What message
does it send?
2.What is the status of a woman in the Chinese culture Kingston describes?
Defend your answer with examples from the book. Consider the importance of
appearance, usefulness, and self-discipline.
3.How does Kingston tell the story of her aunt? Why do you suppose she tells it
this way?
4.What is more important in the Chinese culture Kingston describes: the
individual or the community? Why might this question be particularly interesting
to a woman who grew up in the United States?
5.Why does Kingston say that she has participated in her aunt's punishment?
6.What is the significance of the title of this chapter?
White Tigers
7. “Talk-story” is a term Kingston borrowed from Hawaiian pidgin. How does Kingston define “talk-story”
for her novel?
8. "Night after night my mother would talk-story until we fell asleep," Kingston writes. "I couldn't tell where
the stories left and the dreams began, her voice the voice of the heroines in my sleep" (19). What is the
significance of this passage in relation to the novel itself?
9. What is the significance of Fa Mu Lan in Kingston’s life?
10.How does the woman warrior develop? What does she learn to do?
11.Kingston writes: "Unlike tigers, dragons are so immense, I would never see one in its entirety" (28). How
might this statement serve as a metaphor for something larger or more significant than dragons?
12.How is the narrator’s femininity and child-bearing seen differently from the previous chapter?
13.Why does Kingston say, "My American life has been such a disappointment"?
14.What parallels can be drawn from Kingston’s American life, to that of her childhood hero, Mu Lan’s?
Shaman
15.What is the significance of Kingston’s mother’s diploma?
16.Who are the ghosts Kingston describes in "Shaman," and why does she call them that? Why do ghosts
play such an important role in this section and in the book as a whole?
17.Analyze the description of Kingston's mother's life in China.
18.Why does Kingston envy her mother's slave?
19.How does Kingston depict her mother in this section (her academic life and career in medicine)? In
what ways does this depiction fit in some of the book's larger themes?
ELA Standards: Reading 3.2, 3.7, 3.9!Ms. Tan/English 11H
