Kingston, who in "Shaman" narrated the personal talk-story of her mother, Brave Orchid, now relates the failed assimilation into American culture of Brave Orchid's younger sister, Moon Orchid, whose inability to adapt to a new, American way of life destines her first to insanity and then to death. Estranged from her husband for thirty years after he left China and moved to America, Moon Orchid arrives in America from Hong Kong, where she lived a very comfortable life thanks to her husband, who regularly sent money to support her and their daughter, but who never personally corresponded with his Chinese family. He does not know that Brave Orchid has arranged for her sister to immigrate to America.
Unlike the other chapters in The Woman Warrior, "At the Western Palace" is narrated by a third-person narrator, who relates the talk-story about Kingston's aunt by constructing a linear plot progression. The chapter opens at the San Francisco airport, where sixty-eight-year-old Brave Orchid has been waiting for over nine hours for Moon Orchid's arrival. She is irritated that her children are wandering around the airport rather than sitting quietly with her. Moon Orchid's daughter, whom Brave Orchid also helped emigrate from China, and who has not seen her mother for five years, sits patiently with her aunt. Brave Orchid has been awake since before her sister's airplane took off from Hong Kong, intent on adding her "will power to the forces that keep an airplane up." When she sees a group of soldiers and sailors in the airport terminal, she suddenly remembers that her own son is serving in the Vietnam War. Forced now to split her shamanic powers between her sister's safety and her son's safety, her head hurts from the concentration in keeping Moon Orchid's plane airborne and her son's ship afloat. Anxious about this son, whom she considers to be a heedless boy who will surely die in the war, she divulges her worries about him to her niece. Her other children can take care of themselves, she says, but this son is not normal: He "sticks erasers in his ears, and the erasers are still attached to the pencil stubs. The captain will say, 'Abandon Ship,' or, 'Watch out for bombs,' and he won't hear."
