The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them. What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are "report a crime" and "report to five families." The reporting is the vengeance—not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. And I have so many words—"chink" words and "gook" words too—that they do not fit on my skin.

At the end of "White Tigers," Kingston draws a sharp contrast between her fantasy about Fa Mu Lan, the woman warrior, and the defining moments of her real "American life." Whereas Fa Mu Lan vanquishes entire armies and defeats evil barons and giants, Kingston cannot even stand up to the most petty racist bosses. However, in this quotation, the closing thoughts of the chapter, she makes an important comparison between herself and the warrior: they both are burdened with words. Fa Mu Lan had her village's grievances tattooed on her back; Kingston has Chinese stories practically drilled into her brain and is labeled with racial epithets. Her personal struggle and vengeance lie in making sense of the stories through writing, in depicting through words the struggles of growing up Chinese-American. There is an important difference, though: Fa Mu Lan could achieve her vengeance and then return home, but Kingston's vengeance seems to be a never-ending struggle. She has so many words to deal with that "they do not fit on my skin." The Woman Warrior is just the beginning of Kingston's attempt to articulate her experience, and her journey as a writer is far from over.