#6 for 2011
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston
This was a WONDERFUL book- especially since I picked it up not knowing anything about it and then proceeded to be blown away. It's short, it's powerful; just give it a go.
When the mountains and pines turned into blue oxen, blue dogs, and blue people standing, the old couple asked me to spend the night in the hut. (p. 26)
When I dream that I am wire without flesh, there is a letter on blue airmail paper that floats above the ocean between here and China. It must arrive safely or else my grandmother and I will lose each other. (p. 60)
Not many women got to live out the daydream of women- to have a room, even a section of a room, that only gets messed up when she messes it up herself. The book would stay open at the very page she pressed had flat with her hand, and no one would complain about the field not being plowed or the leak in the roof. She would clean her bowl and a small, limited area; she would have one drawer to sort, one bed to make. (p. 72)
My mother might have been afraid, but she would be a dragoness ("my totem, your totem"). She could make herself not weak. During danger she fanned out her dragon claws and riffled her red sequin scales and unfolded her coiling green stripes. Danger was a good time for showing off. (p. 79)
also p. 56 ;)
ETA: Oh my I have not kept up here... I need to go back and put in, um, all the books for 2011!
