This is the only one of Kingston's books I have read but I have read it numerous times, because I taught it in a "Minority Visions in American Lit" course I taught when I was adjunct college teaching in the 1980s. Reading it over and over really made me appreciate how rich and unqiue it is. The book cover calls it an "autobiographical novel" -- as ambigious a genre category as you will ever come by. Essentially, it's a memoir about growing up Chinese American. Kingston conveys that experience through various styles and points of view, including a fantasy section about a girl who becomes a warrior and saves her family and country -- a classic childhood fantasy of pleasing everyone and saving the day. It's about the trials and tribulations of being -- and not being -- a good daughter; it's about being a sister; it's about voice (one of the characters stays home from school, unable to speak, for a long stretch of time); it's about family -- rituals, traditions, tribal expectations, food. It's a great, moving and enriching read.

Never has a first-read recommendation come so easy.
Woman Warrior all the way.
The first paragraph roped me, maybe the first sentence actually...
One of those books that makes you love the author.