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17+ Works 7,290 Members 88 Reviews 18 Favorited

About the Author

Born in California to immigrant Chinese parents, Kingston was educated at the University of California at Berkeley. Kingston soared to literary celebrity upon the publication of her autobiographica The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976). The Woman Warrior is dominated by show more Kingston's mother; her next work, China Men (1980), although not autobiographical in the manner of her previous book, is focused on her father and on the other men in her family, giving fictionalized, poetic versions of their histories. The combination of fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and myth in both books create a form of balanced opposites that one critic has likened to yin and yang. Her first novel, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, was published in 1989. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Gail K. Evanari

Works by Maxine Hong Kingston

Associated Works

The Lover (1984) — Introduction, some editions — 5,105 copies
In the Time of the Butterflies (1994) — Foreword, some editions — 4,449 copies
The Best American Essays of the Century (2000) — Contributor — 774 copies
The Norton Book of Women's Lives (1993) — Contributor — 409 copies
Women's America: Refocusing the Past (1982) — Contributor, some editions — 333 copies
For a Future to Be Possible (1993) — Contributor — 247 copies
We Are the Stories We Tell (1990) — Contributor — 193 copies
Modern American Memoirs (1995) — Contributor — 189 copies
This Is My Best: Great Writers Share Their Favorite Work (2004) — Contributor — 159 copies
American Dragons: Twenty-five Asian American Voices (1995) — Contributor — 124 copies
The Penguin Book of Women's Humour (1996) — Contributor — 117 copies
Growing up Asian American: An Anthology (1993) — Contributor — 101 copies
The State of the Language [1980] (1980) — Contributor — 82 copies
The Vintage Book of American Women Writers (2011) — Contributor — 56 copies
California Uncovered: Stories For The 21st Century (2005) — Contributor — 31 copies
Asian-American Literature: An Anthology (2000) — Contributor — 30 copies
Bold Words: A Century of Asian American Writing (2001) — Contributor — 19 copies
Wonders: Writings and Drawings for the Child in Us All (1980) — Contributor — 18 copies
Don't Look Back: Hawaiian Myths Made New (2011) — Contributor — 6 copies

Tagged

20th century (210) American (115) American literature (132) anthology (309) Asian (51) Asian American (176) Asian American literature (66) autobiography (294) biography (318) California (84) China (272) Chinese (76) Chinese Americans (246) colonialism (69) essays (231) feminism (157) fiction (1,119) France (101) French (208) French literature (214) history (142) immigrants (60) Indochina (100) literature (257) memoir (729) non-fiction (610) novel (234) own (69) poetry (54) read (132) Roman (83) romance (51) short stories (136) to-read (548) unread (108) USA (60) Vietnam (117) women (289) women's studies (109) writing (65)

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Reviews

A haunting story of a Chinese American trying to make sense of her heritage and confusing family history. She uncovers a story so powerful that finally allows her to accept her position in life.
 
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marquis784 | 69 other reviews | Oct 17, 2023 |
Another one I remember reading some years ago, without now recalling its details. But I do remember it was enjoyable.
 
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mykl-s | 5 other reviews | Mar 2, 2023 |
Kingston is a master at weaving first, second, and third voices into a memoir filled with anicient Chinese folklore and cautionary tales about womanhood. I felt a lot of sadness in Woman Warrior. The tragedy starts early in as Kingston describes her mother, a former Chinese doctor, telling a horrifying tale about an aunt giving birth to a sexless child in a pigsty and then committing suicide with that baby; drowning together in a well. There was such shame in this pregnancy, "To save her inseminator's name she gave a silent birth" (p 14). So much contradiction in culture! There is a crime to being born female and yet there is the story of the fierce woman warrior, the legend of the female avenger. My favorite parts were when Kingston addresses the difference between American-feminine and Chinese-feminine.… (more)
 
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SeriousGrace | 69 other reviews | Oct 3, 2022 |
This is an extraordinary book. It is a memoir of Kingston's childhood and adolescence, interspersed with Chinese legends featuring women.

There is no question that it requires committed reading, especially at the beginning where the line is blurry between reality and "talk-stories", or cultural myths (including that of Mulan, of Disney fame). This confusion is further complicated by Kingston's use of the first, second and third person narrative voices. But the rewards are worth the effort, as we become part of her unique experience. “Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.”

There seem to have been two reactions to this book when it was first published. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award, no small achievement. But it was also dissed by a number of Chinese-American critics who felt her interpretations of the Chinese-American experience lacked authenticity.

From what I've been able to determine by a quick internet search, those critics were primarily male, which brings us to a key element of this book: It is not simply an exploration of the overall first generation Chinese-American experience, it is a specific Chinese-American woman's experience.

I would posit that any memoir legitimately reflects the life of the person writing and no one else. This 2017 quote from a much younger Chinese-American author, Angela Chen, who avoided reading [b:The Woman Warrior|30852|The Woman Warrior|Maxine Hong Kingston|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1541333110l/30852._SY75_.jpg|1759] for many years expresses that opinion more elegantly than I can: "But taken off this pedestal, the innovations and craft of The Woman Warrior become more apparent. It is a complex account of what it was like to be Kingston, writing about experiences at a time that few others did. It is the personal and not the general. It is not template, not beginning or end."

This came to be my first read of 2021 by chance. I recently listened to a series of lectures about American best sellers through the centuries, and the only book that I hadn't already read that piqued my curiosity was [b:The Woman Warrior|30852|The Woman Warrior|Maxine Hong Kingston|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1541333110l/30852._SY75_.jpg|1759]. I'm so glad it did; it was a great way to begin the year.
… (more)
 
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BarbKBooks | 69 other reviews | Aug 15, 2022 |

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Works
17
Also by
30
Members
7,290
Popularity
#3,355
Rating
3.8
Reviews
88
ISBNs
66
Languages
5
Favorited
18

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