ed messages in the stories of the swordswoman and the shamed aunt. A woman is expected to adhere to strict moral codes lest she risk ostracism and death, but at the same time she is told stories which inflame her imagination and seem to encourage her to action, adventure, and even vengeance for wrongs done. The difficulty of adjusting to these contradictory messages is made even greater when the individual Asian is transplanted to the strangeness of the American culture:
Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. Those in the emigrant generations who could not reassert brute survival died young and far from home. Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out
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