Maxine Hong Kingston (b.1940) is an American novelist and memoirist. Much of her three novels and several works of non-fiction are rooted in her experience as a first-generation Chinese American.
Born in Stockton, California, Kingston was the daughter of Chinese immigrants who ran laundries. Growing up, she was influenced by her parents’ fictional stories about her ancestors. She noticed that the stories changed with each telling because they were part truth and part fiction.
After studying at the University of California at Berkley, she decided to write a book about her family. She used the same mix of fact and imagination, telling the same stories from multiple angles. She published these stories about her family in The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976,) combining myth, family history, folktales, and memories of the experience of growing up within two conflicting cultures. Kingston’s other novels about the Chinese-American experience are China Men (1980,) In Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989,) and The Fifth Book of Peace (2003.) Her I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (2011) is a “memoir-in-verse.”
Starting from 1993, Kingston ran a series of writing and meditation workshops for veterans of various conflicts and their families. Based on these workshops, Kingston wrote Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2006,) a collection of prose and verse on war, domestic violence, drug abuse, and other traumatic experiences.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Maxine Hong Kingston
Hunger also changes the world – when eating can’t be a habit, than neither can seeing
—Maxine Hong Kingston
The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the Gods.
—Maxine Hong Kingston
Topics: Grace
To me success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world—that I am able to change it in positive ways.
—Maxine Hong Kingston
Topics: Effectiveness, Success
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