Maxine Hong Kingston

Biography

Maxine Hong Kingston was born in 1940 in Stockton, California, the first American-born child of Chinese immigrants. Her father ran a laundry; her mother Brave Orchid (the book's central figure) had been a medical student in China. Kingston won eleven scholarships to UC Berkeley, studied English literature, and eventually published The Woman Warrior in 1976 when she was 36. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction — which immediately prompted debate about whether it was nonfiction at all, since it blends myth and memoir without delineating the border. Kingston has said the ambiguity is the point.

Maxine Hong Kingston at a glance