This chapter traces the arc of Maxine Hong Kingston's career focusing on her evolving artistic and social vision. It explores the body of her work from The Woman Warrior and China Men to her novel Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book and her more recent books The Fifth Book of Peace and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life. The chapter reanimates the critical reception of her oeuvre through the multiple vantage points of Asian American studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, and theory. It outlines The Woman Warrior's contribution to early debates about Asian American identity and cultural authenticity. The chapter examines the affinities of her work to feminism and postmodernism. While exploring the affinities between Asian American texts and postmodern or modernist literary constructions has helped Asian American critics to move beyond merely ethnographic or sociological study, David Palumbo-Liu emphasizes the importance of historically locating such literatures and their aesthetic modes.

Writing on British women's international interests in the nineteenth century has tended to focus on three areas: pacifism; links between national feminist movements; and the relationship between feminists and women subjects of the British empire, particularly India. Christianity was British women's main vehicle for activity outside the private realm. Women's responses to the East, the Balkan areas under the Ottoman caliphate which included substantial Orthodox Christian communities, have been described in the context of their pacifist initiatives. The Englishwoman's Review drew the moral that only the recognition of women's right to equal partnership with men in political life could mitigate the horrors of war. By the start of the twentieth century, British women's growing sense of confidence in their claims to citizenship was reinforced by their leading role in international women's organisations: the International Council of Women (ICW) and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA).