Maxine Hong Kingston 1940-

Life• Family– Father: Tom Hong, a first-generation immigrant

from China, owned a laundry in Stockton, CA– Mother: Ying Lan (Chew) Hong (“Brave Orchid”),

first-generation immigrant from China– Husband: Earll Kingston, actor– Son: Joseph Lawrence Chung Mei, born in 1964

Home• Stockton, CA• Berkeley, CA

• Honolulu, Hawaii• Oakland, CA

Chronology• 1940: born in Stockton, CA• 1962: graduates from UC Berkeley– Majoring first in engineering then in English

• 1962: marries Earll Kingston, a classmate at Berkeley

• 1964: gives birth to son, Joseph Lawrence Chung Mei

• 1965: earns a teaching certificate and begins teaching high school

Chronology Continued• 1967: moves to Hawaii• 1976: publishes The Woman Warrior:

Memories of a Girlhood Among Ghosts• 1976: begins teaching English at the University

of Hawaii in Honolulu• 1980: publishes China Men• 1981: receives Guggenheim Fellowship• 1981: begins teaching at UC, Berkeley• 1989: Publishes Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake

Book

Woman Warrior

• Published in 1976 was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction

Other Awards• In 1997, she was awarded the National

Humanities Medal by President Bill Clinton.• Kingston was also a member of the committee

to choose the design for the California commemorative quarter.

• In April, 2007, Hong Kingston was awarded the Northern California Book Award Special Award in Publishing for Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2006), an anthology which she edited.

More Awards• Anisfield-Wolf Race Relations Award, 1978• National Endowment for the Arts Writers Award,

1980• National Book Award for General Nonfiction for

China Men, 1981• National Endowment for the Arts Writers Award,

1982• PEN West Award in fiction for Tripmaster Monkey:

His Fake Book, 1989• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asian

American Literary Awards, 2006• Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American

Letters: National Book Foundation, 2008

Selected works

• No Name Woman (essay), 1975• The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood

Among Ghosts, 1976• China Men, Knopf, 1980• Hawaii One Summer, 1987• Through the Black Curtain, 1987• Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, 1989• To Be the Poet, 2002• The Fifth Book of Peace, 2003• Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, 2006• I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, 2011

Arrest Record• She was arrested in March 2003 in Washington, D.C. for

crossing a police line during a protest against the war in Iraq.

• Kingston was arrested on International Women's Day (March 8) of 2003. Participating in an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. coordinated by women-initiated organization Code Pink, Kingston refused to leave the street after being instructed to do so by local police forces. She shared a jail cell with author Alice Walker. Kingston's anti-war stance has significantly trickled into her work; she has stated that writing The Fifth Book of Peace was initiated and inspired by growing up during World War II.