What are little girls made of? Sugar and Spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of. Sugar and Spice...is that the recipe for all little girls? It’s certainly what the little AMERICAN girl grows up learning. But what about the little CHINESE girl, who grows up learning quite a different lesson? She learns "there is no profit in raising girls" and "better to raise geese than girls." Maxine Hong Kingston’s autobiographical, The Woman Warrior, bursts at the seams with the examples of the cruel treatment of females in and among the Chinese culture. Simply being born embarks the Chinese female on a ceaseless cycle of inferior treatment from society. From as early as birth, with even the youngest of girls being sold as slaves in the street markets, on into the later stages of life, serving as slaves to their husbands, Chinese females are treated as inferiors. The Chinese word for the female "I" means slave, so even the women, in addition to the rest of society, break themselves with their own tongues. Each time the Chinese female utters the word "I", she belittles herself. Although Kingston does not literally and physically experience the chains of slavery that come with being a Chinese woman because she was born in America, her Chinese heritage still enslaves her. Instead of being aught in the customs of just the Chinese culture, Kingston is trapped between two cultures, that of the Chinese and that of the American. As a result of the enslavement caused by these two cultures, the need for a process of self-exploration arises. Compare this enslavement to the experience of living for someone other than yourself. Upon finallly realizing that you need to live for yourself, you, just as Kingston searches for a definition of herself, must find your own self through establishing your own identity,. Kingston’s The Woman Warrior serves as a journey of discovering the self and what it means to be a Chinese-American "born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents."
    Kingston uses the characters in The Woman Warrior as tools in the construction of her identity as Chinese-American, with each narrative contributing its own part. As Gayle K. Fujita Sato states in Ghosts as Chinese American Constructs in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, "the narratives of No Name Woman, Fa Mulan, Brave Orchid, and Ts’ai Yen not only present five versions of female development but also express a concentric movement from imagined...toward actual experience." Kingston begins in an unamed Chinese village at the home of No Name Woman with her mother’s fictional talk-story, but ends her journey at her own home in Stockton, California with the reality of actual experiences.
    The journey begins with the explorations of Kingston’s Chinese heritage through the story of No Name Woman who had been banished by society and disowned by her family. Kingston establishes her Chinese heritage by expressing a kinship with the No Name Woman, claiming her aunt as her "forerunner," and thereby giving recognition to her Chinese heritage through family ties. Continuing on with Kingston’s journey, the introduction of Fa Mulan represents Kingston’s Chinese heritage. This ancient Chinese legend of a woman warrior who fights in the disguise of a man in order to redeem the respect of her family and village connects Kingston to the Chinese culture. Through the narratives of both No Name Woman and Fa Mulan, Kingston figuratively places herself within the Chinese culture, but because she is not actually a part of these two narratives, Kingston can step back and criticize her culture while still maintaining her connection to it.
    Moving away from her Chinese heritage, Kingston explores her American heritage through the narrative of her mother, Brace Orchid. Even though she is constantly trying to de-Americanize Kingston by forcing the customs of the Chinese culture upon her daughter, Brave Orchid ironically represents Kingston’s American heritage by taking on the American traits of being outspoken and strong, dominating both her daughter Kingston and her sister Moon Orchid. Where Brave Orchid forces the Chinese culture upon Kingston, she forces the American culture upon her sister, bringing Moon Orchid to America urging her to deny her Chinese ways of submissiveness, gain her voice, and confront her husband. Brave Orchid discards her own Chinese culture when she leaves China for America, and places her self in a superior position in society by becoming a doctor. She also breaks the mold of the Chinese woman, refusing to submit to the Chinese ideals of a woman through an exertion of of power when she battles the ghost in the medical school, claiming "When morning comes, only one of us will control this room, Ghost, and that one will be me." Despite the fact that Brave Orchid trys to maker her more Chinese, Kingston explores her American heritage through her mother and her American ways.
    After exploring both her Chinese cultural background, through the narratives of No Name Woman and Fa Mulan, and her American cultural background through the narratives of Brave Orchid and Moon Orchid, Kingston reaches the point of self-actualization in the last chapter through the narrative of Ts’ai Yen. Ts’ai Yen, caught and held captive by barbarians, was separated from her family and culture, just as Kingston is separated from hers. Resulting from her separation, Ts’ai Yen sings a song about China and her family, and while the song is about the Chinese culture, the barbarians can understand it and even think they hear barbarian phrases here and there within the song. With this song Ts’ai Yen thus joins the two cultures and frees herself psychologically from the barbarians. Just as Ta’ai Yen is able to free herself by bridging two cultures with her song, Kingston frees herself from the enslavement of being tapped between two cultures by defining and declaring herself as neither merely the Chinese culture mor merely the American culture, but instead, as of a sythesis of the two: as a Chinese-American.
    Similar to the barbarians in the last chapter reaching again and again for a high note, yearning toward a high note until at last they find and hold it, Kingston herself, through her autobiography, is trying to find her own high note, her identity. The Woman Warrior is Kingston’s own narrative of a journey of the self, beginning with the imagined and ending with actual experience. Through this journey, which first begins with an exploration of her Chinese culture, then continues with an exploration of her American culture, and finally ends with a synthesis of the two, Kingston understands and defines exactly who she is. Through The Woman Warrior Kingston isentifies herself as someone, as Khani Begum describes, that society, both Chinese and American, has not yet defined accurately-a Chinese American whose experiences, while sometimes common with those of the Chinese and the American, differ greatly from both groups to make her a unique individual, a Chinese-American.