Kingston, Maxine Hong

(US/Chinese, 1940– )

Hong Kingston's work bridges two cultures and The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976) is her response to making sense of the two worlds. Her mother, once a respected doctor in China, told stories of strong Chinese woman through her native myths and fables but never spoke of the aunt who committed suicide. Hong Kingston writes passionately about the oppression Chinese woman suffered. China Men (1980) does the same for the experience of her father and other male relatives in the United States. Trip Master Monkey: His Fake Book (1989) gives us a wonderful character in the form of Wittman Ah Sing, a Chinese-American hippie playwright and poet as he sets about writing and staging a play full of Chinese stories. Her writing pioneered the way for female writers’ voices from other ethnic backgrounds, both stylistically and in content.

Amy Tan, Toni Morrison  TO