"China Men," using the same techniques as "The Woman Warrior"—the blend of myth, legend and history, the fevered voice, relentless as a truth-seeking child's—is impelled by Mrs. Kingston's need to understand the men with whom she is connected: her father, grandfather, brother, mythic figures….

Mrs. Kingston begins her quest for understanding with her own father. But whereas her mother, Brave Orchid, was full of "talk-story," her father does not speak. "You say with the few words and the silences: 'No stories. No past. No China.'" So she must piece together the few facts she has and invent the rest, a myth grown out of unknowing, foreignness….

Nowhere is Mrs. Kingston's technique—the close focus, the fascination with the details of survival strategies, the repetitive, fixated tone—more successful than in her description of the plantation workers' talking into the earth in defiance of the silence...