First published 2011
At sixty-five, Maxine Hong Kingston looks back across decades of writing and activism from her unique position as a Chinese-American author. She recounts being arrested alongside Alice Walker during Iraq War protests and describes her solitary return to the villages her parents abandoned when they emigrated to America. Kingston weaves these personal memories with a fictional thread, dispatching her literary creation Wittman Ah Sing on his own expedition through contemporary China. The memoir moves between real events from her politically engaged life and imagined scenes as her character navigates modern China. Kingston examines what it means to live between two cultures, drawing from her experiences as the acclaimed author of The Woman Warrior and China Men. Her reflections span literature and political action, always filtered through the complexity of mixed identity. The book captures both her actual journey to her ancestral homeland and the fictional voyage she creates for Wittman, blending autobiography with invented narrative as Kingston considers a lifetime spent bridging Chinese heritage and American experience.
Genres: american-fiction, 20th-century, autobiography, contemporary, china, biography-memoir, 21st-century, activism
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: dual-narrative, fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: America, China
Period: 20th Century, 21st Century
226 pages · Paperback · Harvill Press