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
training march humans
Humans are basically good. That's why it takes so much training to march march march kill kill kill kill.
infidelity extravagance adultery
Adultery is extravagance.
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.
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.
feet dangerous bounds
Perhaps women were once so dangerous that they had to have their feet bound
hate range
And I had to get out of hating range.
ugly may retarded
I may be ugly and clumsy, but one thing I'm not, I'm not retarded.
forever young live-forever
You're too young to decide to live forever.
philosophical trying curtains
There's something in life that's a curtain, and I keep trying to raise it.
sex lying men
My aunt could not have been the lone romantic who gave up everything for sex. Women in the old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil.
ocean sleep eye
Ocean people are very different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which don't sleep like eyes.
marriage daughter husband
Daughters-in-law lived with their husbands' parents, not their own; a synonym for marriage in Chinese is "taking a daughter-in-law.
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.
oral-tradition stories dont-change
There can't be a pure myth, especially when the myth has been handed down in the oral tradition. As the stories are told, they change. If the stories don't change they just die.