Maxine Hong Kingston: Woman Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston, born in 1940 on October 27 in Stockton, California, is a first generation Chinese-American child along with her six younger siblings. Kingston would have two older siblings in addition to the six, but they died in China before her parents immigrated to the U.S. Kingston’s parents, Tom and Ying Lan Hong, both immigrated to America, but they arrived at different times. Tom, who came to the United States in 1924, was a poet and also a scholar but could not find work that fit those categories. He found a job in laundry and also in a gambling house as a manager. Ying Lan eventually immigrated to America in 1939 and Kingston was born the next year. As she was growing up, Kingston worked at the laundry alongside with her family. She felt that her parents did not support her enough in her schooling and did not care much for her education due to a conservative culture in which Chinese women should mostly stay and work at home. Although her parents did not motivate her to go well in school, Kingston has a remarkable high school record including the eleven scholarships she won that aided her into going to the University of California in Berkeley. She graduated …show more content…
In 1976, her first book and best known book, The Woman Warrior, was published and it even received the National Book Critics Award in 1976. The success she had gotten out of her first book lead to her retiring from teaching and dedicating her time in writing. Many of her books are about her personal experiences, stories her mother told her as a child or about her family. Her interest in writing actually appeared due to her mother’s storytelling to a young Kingston. Kingston has wrote a selection of writings including books and novels like China Men (1980), which also won an award, and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989) and even a collection of poems called Hawaii One Summer