Maxine Hong Kingston

Author profile

born

October 27, 1940 in Stockton, California, The United States

gender

female

About this author

She was born as Maxine Ting Ting Hong to a laundry house owner in Stockton, California. She was the third of eight children, and the first among them born in the United States. Her mother trained as a midwife at the To Keung School of Midwifery in Canton. Her father had been brought up a scholar and taught in his village of Sun Woi, near Canton. Tom left China for America in 1924 and took a job in a laundry.

Her works often reflect on her cultural heritage and blend fiction with non-fiction. Among her works are The Woman Warrior (1976), awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, and China Men (1980), which was awarded the 1981 National Book Award. She has written one novel, Tripmaster Monkey, a story depicting a character...more

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Books by Maxine Hong Kingston

Average rating: 3.68 · 9,448 ratings · 712 reviews · 21 distinct works

	The Woman Warrior 3.69 avg rating — 7,735 ratings — published 1976 — 17 editions	My rating:
	China Men 3.63 avg rating — 706 ratings — published 1980 — 10 editions	My rating:
	Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book by Maxine Hong Kingston, Erroll McDonald (Editor) 3.47 avg rating — 492 ratings — 7 editions	My rating:
	The Fifth Book of Peace 3.56 avg rating — 196 ratings — published 2003 — 7 editions	My rating:
	I Love a Broad Margin to My Life 3.68 avg rating — 63 ratings — published 2011 — 4 editions	My rating:
	Hawai'i One Summer 3.89 avg rating — 35 ratings — published 1998	My rating:
	To Be the Poet 3.67 avg rating — 33 ratings — published 2002 — 3 editions	My rating:
	The Woman Warrior, China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston, Mary Gordon (Introduction) 3.71 avg rating — 28 ratings — published 1977	My rating:
	Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace 4.38 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 2006	My rating:
	The Woman Warrior 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1976	My rating:

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Quotes by Maxine Hong Kingston

“In a time of destruction, create something.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston

tags: creation , destruction , hope , life

371 people liked it

“This is the most important thing about me--I'm a card-carrying reader. All I really want to do is sit and read or lie down and read or eat and read or shit and read. I'm a trained reader. I want a job where I get paid for reading books. And I don't have to make reports on what I read or to apply what I read.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book

tags: books , reading

75 people liked it

“I tried to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes. ”
― Maxine Hong Kingston

13 people liked it

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