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[7437] Eric Risberg, Author Maxine Hong Kingston (2001), courtesy of the Associated Press.
While most famous for her first novel, the 1976 National Book Critics Circle award-winning The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, which addresses the complex issues facing Chinese American women, Kingston also wrote a companion novel, China Men, that does the same for Chinese American men. Kingston is adept at weaving China’s oral tradition of storytelling into her fiction, but her fiction says as much about mainstream America as it does about Chinese Americans. She is also a keen observer of the ways people interact with and judge each other and, like Toni Morrison, provides provocative critiques of how people from all ethnic groups are guilty of stereotyping rather than sincerely trying to know each other.
In Tripmaster Monkey, Kingston returns to the locale of her college days, Berkeley, California, to tell the story of a struggling Chinese American playwright. We see in the sometimes-disagreeable character Wittman Ah Sing that Kingston is not afraid to tackle complicated issues that may cause some discomfort for readers both within and outside of Chinese American communities. Kingston’s stories are not only for or about Chinese Americans: she strives to create literature that illuminates what it means to be an American, period, and as such resonates with readers from any ethnic group.
[6166] Anonymous, Police and Detectives Guarding Chinatown, July 6, 1909 (1909),
courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-69697].
Writing at the turn of the twentieth century, Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton) made efforts to combat stereotypes of Chinese immigrants as “heathen,” “unclean,” and “untrustworthy.” She provided insight into the unique culture of America’s Chinatowns.
[6170] Anonymous, Chinese New Year (1909),
courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-120168].
Chinese immigrants brought their traditions and customs to America, where they established strong communities to provide support in an unfamiliar world. Maxine Hong Kingston offers personal and deeply reflective portraits of how Chinese immigrants’ experiences, from the mid-nineteenth century through the present, have affected their sense of American identity.
[6171] Arnold Genthe, Children Were the Pride, Joy, Beauty, and Chief Delight of the Quarter, Chinatown, San Francisco (c. 1896-1906),
courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZC4-5265].
Four children in traditional Chinese clothing on a sidewalk in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Writing about the time this photograph was taken, Sui Sin Far (Edith Maud Eaton) sought to make the lives of Chinese immigrants understandable to white audiences.
[6501] Marc Cohen, Cover: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston (1989),
courtesy of Vintage International.
Maxine Hong Kingston published her first novel, The Woman Warrior, in 1976. Kingston was born in California to Chinese parents and grew up speaking Say Yup, a Cantonese dialect. Her prose is infused with Chinese rhythms and Chinese American speech.
[7437] Eric Risberg, Author Maxine Hong Kingston (2001),
courtesy of the Associated Press.
“We approach the truth with metaphors.”–Kingston, from “An Imagined Life.” Kingston draws much of the inspiration for her writing from the stories her mother told her as a child, which kept Chinese tradition alive for her.
[8183] Anonymous, The Voyage, No. 8 (c. 1920), reprinted in Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940,
courtesy of the University of Washington Press.
“How has anyone to know that my dwelling place would be a prison?” asks this poem, one of many written on the walls of the Angel Island detention center by Chinese immigrants who were held there for extended periods by U.S. authorities. Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men focuses on the stories of early Chinese American immigrants.