As The Woman Warrior progresses, Kingston relies less on her mother's narratives and more on her own recollections of family events and of experiences growing up. In the memoir's fourth chapter, "At the Western Palace," she writes about her aunt, Moon Orchid, who fails to assimilate into American culture. Moon Orchid's husband arrived alone in America and became a successful doctor. However, after many years of practicing medicine in Los Angeles, he remarried and abandoned Moon Orchid, who remained in Hong Kong waiting for him to send for her. Brave Orchid, determined to have Moon Orchid confront this irresponsible man, arranges for her sister to immigrate to America, but when Moon Orchid finally faces her husband, he again rejects her and chides her for disrupting his life and career. Moon Orchid subsequently goes mad, ending her days in an insane asylum.
In the last chapter, "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe," in which Kingston describes her childhood emotional experiences and the conflicts she felt growing up in a Chinese household in America, she depicts the pains of finding a personal identity and a voice to express herself to her parents and a society that do not understand her. She ends The Woman Warrior with the legend of Ts'ai Yen, an ancient Chinese female poet who was captured by a non-Chinese tribe and who lived among these nomadic people for twelve years but could never fully assimilate into their culture. Kingston strongly implies that her mother is like Ts'ai Yen in that Brave Orchid longs to return to her Chinese village, but Kingston also suggests that she too sees herself as a foreigner among Americans, caught between the Chinese traditions of her parents and American culture's emphasis on individuality. Her memoir is similar to Ts'ai Yen's cathartic song, which the barbarians cannot understand: "Her words seemed to be Chinese, but the barbarians understood their sadness and anger."
