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
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.
sky together earth
We're all under the same sky and walk the same earth; we're alive together during the same moment.
joy
Joy and life exist nowhere but the present.
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.
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.
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.