Maxine Hong Kingston Posters & Books, Links for Learning
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Maxine Hong Kingston, Great Asian Americans, Wall Poster no longer available

Maxine Hong Kingston

Poster Text: In one sense, Maxine Hong Kingston's writing career began when she was only eight years old. That was the year she completed her very first work: a poem whe wrote because whe was bored with her real assignment to draw a map of California. Her teacher could not possibly guessed that the little girl who didn't do her homework would grow up to become an educator and the author of three award-winning books. Like Maxine herself, those books are a blend of Chinese and American ideas. And like her, they are most concerned with the important role that history, language and culture play in people's lives.

Maxine Hong Kingston was born in Stockton, California, in 1940. Her father had come to the country from China in search of a better life. He gave himself the name Tom because he admired the inventor Thomas Edison. After working for many years in a laundry, he was able to send for his wife, and the couple headed for Stockton, where they bought a laundry business. Many of Stockton's Chinese-Americans citizens used the Hongs' laundry as a meeting place, where they could exchange stories and catch up on news of relatives back in China. Maxine, who was called "Ting Ting" by her family, listened to the stories and kept them locked in her memory. Later she would use some of them in her books. School was difficult for Maxine, who at first did not speak English and could not make her teachers understand her. She was an imaginative child, and would often make drawings of people and houses and then cover them with layers of black paint. The black paint was supposed to stage curtains that would soon open to reveal the wonders hidden behind. But Maxine's teachers thought she was being uncooperative, and when she covered her first grade test paper with black, school officials tested her IQ as 0!

As time went on, Maxine's English improved, and so did her grades. In junior high and high school, she wrote plays, poems, stories, and fairy tales – and once won an award for an essay she wrote called "I Am An American." But when she entered the University of California at Berkeley in 1958, she began as an engineering major. During her second year, she changed her major to English. She also met Earl Kingston, who became her husband in 1962. While working as a teacher in Hawaii, Maxine Hong Kingston wrote her first two books, "The Woman Warrior" and "China Men." These books tell about the experiences of Chinese men and women who came to America. Her third book, "Tripmaster Monkey," was published in 1989. Today she is a teacher at Berkeley, and she continues to write stories, poems, articles and books. Maxine Hong Kingston believes that words have the power to change the world for the better. Through her books, she has enabled millions of people to better understand the Chinese culture, and she has brought people of all beliefs and backgounds a little closer together.

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Maxine Hong Kingston

“When we Chinese girls listened to the adults talk-story, we learned...we could be heroines, swordswomen... Night after night my mother would talk-story until we fell asleep. I couldn't tell where the stories left off and the dreams began, her voice the voice of the heroines in my sleep.”
- The Woman Warrior

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