`A brilliant memoir . . . it is about being Chinese in the way A Portrait of the Artist is about being Irish; it is an investigation of soul, not landscape, its sources are dream and memory, myth and desire; its crises are the crises of a heart in exile from roots that bind and terrorize it . . . Maxine Hong Kingston writes with bitter and relentless love. Her voice, now, is as clear as the voice of Ts'ai Yen, who sang her sad, angry songs of China to the barbarians. It is as fierce as a warrior's voice, and as eloquent as any artist's' Jane Kramer, New York Times Book Review
`This is a delightful book . . . tells more than I ever imagined about the strangeness of being Chinese and a woman; it also gives a superb account of what it's like simply to be alive' Victoria Radin, New Society
`A strange, enchanting book . . . As a manual of self-discovery through the channels and terrors of one's own rejected communal memory, it is unbeatable' Clancy Sigal, Guardian
`As a dream - of the "female avenger" - it is dizzying, elemental, a poem turned into a sword . . . reimagining the past with such dark beauty, such precision and anger that you feel you have saddled the Tao dragon and see all through the fiery eye of God' John Leonard, New York Times
`A book of fierce clarity and originality' Newsweek
- ISBN10 0808589768
- ISBN13 9780808589761
- Publish Date 23 April 1989 (first published 12 August 1976)
- Publish Status Active
- Imprint Turtleback Books
- Edition Bound for Schools & Libraries ed.
- Format Hardcover (Library Binding)
- Pages 224
- Language English