Imagine yourself surrounded by strange, but terrifying and evil spirits who disturb you in your worst nightmares. The spirits may want something from you. In fact, they might help scare you. Should you take care of it? What do you think they are trying to warn you? In one of the questions above, note the ironic use of the word “fact” which attempts to obscure the fictional nature of ghosts. It shows that the meaning of the word “ghost” is equivocal. In other words, the word "ghost" has multiple values, so that ghosts can act in more than one way. The word “ghost” comes from the Old English word “gast” and its synonyms are “soul, spirit [good or bad spirit], existence, breath” and “demon” (etymonline.com). In the book The Woman Warrior, who, ironically, it is subtitled Memoirs of a Girlhood Amid Ghosts, the author, Maxine Hong Kingston, uses the word “ghost” as a metaphor to represent her confusion about discovering a difference between reality and unreality – the difference that divides her American present that she prefers and her Chinese past that her mother, Valiant Orchid, filters into her mind through stories that constantly discourage her from exceeding established limits. The ghosts, in the book, change depending on the point of view Whoever deviates from what is satisfactory in an industry is a ghost according to the members of that society. To the Chinese, such as Valiant Orchid, the Americans are ghosts. On the other hand, the Chinese are ghosts according to the Chinese-Americans (including Kingston, who finds its past full of frightening Chinese ghosts). For Kingston, the Ghosts, however, are not always scary; in fact some of them excite... half sheet......Memoirs of a childhood among ghosts. Random House, Inc, 1976. PrintBucci, Diane Todd. “Chinese Americans and the Borderland Experience on Gold Mountain: The Development of a Chinese American Identity in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among the Ghosts.” Ethnic Studies Review 30.1/2 (2007): 1-11. Ethnic NewsWatch. Network. December 12, 2011. .Paman, Alex G. "Asian Ghost Stories." Yolk December 31, 2000. Ethnic NewsWatch. Network. 14 December 2011. .Rector, Monica. “Intercultural Understanding: The American Ghost.” Semioticon.com. Network. 15 December 2011. Online etymology dictionary. Network. December 15. 2011. .