The Woman Warrior’s themes are the role of women in Chinese society and growing up Chinese- America. a. In The Woman Warrior, each chapter focuses on a woman that affects Kingston’s life, and in most cases depicts how that woman relates to the male-dominated society around her. The power of tradition as carried through women is oppressive. The subtext of Kingston's relationship with her mother and her mother's talk-stories in particular is both empowerment and disempowerment. Her mother tells her stories of female swordswomen and shamans, and is herself an accomplished, intelligent doctor, but she also reinforces the notion that girls are disappointments to their parents, despite what they may accomplish. b. Many Chinese-Americans share Kingston’s feelings of displacement and frustration. Being Chinese-American often means that one is torn between both worlds without really being part of either. Another difficulty in being Chinese-American is that one's cultural heritage is always second-hand, filtered through the lens—or talk-story—of someone else. At the time Kingston wrote her memoir she had never even been to China. Much of the memoir is about the attempt to sort out the difference between what is Chinese and what is peculiar to her family, what is real and what is just.