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
feelings demand watches
The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one's guts not be turned into action. Just watch their passing like cherry blossoms.
fishes
How unlike a dead fish a live fish is.
long-ago order rope
Long ago in China, knot-makers tied string into buttons and frogs, and rope into bell pulls. There was one knot so complicated that it blinded the knot-maker. Finally an emperor outlawed this cruel knot, and the nobles could not order it anymore. If I had lived in China, I would have been an outlaw knot-maker.
people path crosses
Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people.
motivational women mean
To me success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world--that I am able to change it in positive ways.
teaching mind rooms
I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.
sex race definitions
When alone I am not aware of my race or my sex, both in need of social contexts for definition.
world hunger eating
Hunger also changes the world - when eating can't be a habit, then neither can seeing.
school community peaceful
In a time of destruction, create something: a poem, a parade, a community, a school, a vow, a moral principle; one peaceful moment.
sky together earth
We're all under the same sky and walk the same earth; we're alive together during the same moment.
hope destruction
In a time of destruction, create something.
together stories conflict
A story can take you through a whole process of searching, seeking, confronting, through conflicts, and then to a resolution. As the storyteller and the listener, we go through a story together.
girl hurt feet
When we Chinese girls listened to the adults talk-story, we learned that we failed if we grew up to be but wives or slaves. We could be heroines, swordswomen. Even if she had to rage across all China, a swordswoman got even with anybody who hurt her family. Perhaps women were once so dangerous that they had to have their feet bound.
looks doe sometimes
What does old look like? Sometimes I am wrinkled, sometimes not.