Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingstonis a Chinese American author and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United States...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth27 October 1940
CountryUnited States of America
girl children stranger
When you raise girls, you're raising children for strangers.
husband adventure kids
No husband of mine will say, "I could have been a drummer, but I had to think about the wife and kids. You know how it is." Nobody supports me at the expense of his own adventure.
eye two feet
...I've learned exactly who the enemy are. I easily recognize them-business-suited in their modern American executive guise, each boss two feet taller than I am and impossible to meet eye to eye.
talking people village
I'd like to go to New Society Village someday and find out exactly how far I can walk before people stop talking like me.
thinking honest scales
Any merchant who advertises 'Honest Scales' must have been thinking about weighing them.
hurt
Gods you avoid won't hurt you.
believe tired age
I do not believe in old age. I do not believe in getting tired.
writing culture feels
It seems that writing chose me. I feel that because I know history, and I know the history of so many cultures; I have lived a large life.
hurt people ancestry
People who can comfort the dead can also chase after them to hurt them further-a reverse ancestor worship.
home learning dark
Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic the new way of seeing. I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation. I enjoy the simplicity. Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways and sidewalks. Give me plastics, periodical tables, TV dinners with vegetables no more complex than peas mixed with diced carrots. Shine floodlights into dark corners: no ghosts.
You can't eat straight A's.
mother justice childhood
Chinese Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?
order people childhood
Attraction eludes control so stubbornly that whole societies designed to organize relationships among people cannot keep order, not even when they bind people to one another from childhood and raise them together.
live-life artist musician
I'm so proud that my offspring became a musician. I'm full of awe that we are able to have a whole family live the life of artists.