In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong has ambivalent sentiments about being a Chinese female. In the Chinese culture daughters are treated as a liability and that made her wish she was a boy when she was younger. The way her parents and other Chinese people speak about girls is one of the reasons that she seems to at sometimes resent the Chinese culture. However, she really seems to identify with the figure of the women warrior. As a kid she was told the story of Fa Mulan and to wants to be like her. Even as she gets older she still fantasizes of being a woman warrior, “I’ve looked for the bird...I was that eager to find an unusual bird” (51). The bird signifies the beginning of Fa Mulan’s journey as a woman warrior, and the end of her life as
