ABSTRACT
Of all Asian American writers, Maxine Hong Kingston is undoubtedly the best known, best loved, and most widely respected. Her books are accomplished works of art, and her public positions on pacifism and bilingual education in the face of powerful opposition are both selfless and courageous. Her first book, The Woman Warrior, won the National Book Critics Circle award for the best nonfiction of 1976, after which Kingston was showered with numerous other awards, including the rare title of Living Treasure of Hawaii bestowed by a Buddhist group in 1980. China Men (1980) won the American Book Award for 1981; her novel Tripmaster Monkey (1990) received the Pen West Award for fiction. She holds honorary doctorates from universities throughout the United States. Numerous interviews with her have been printed in national and local newspapers and journals; she has been televised and filmed.The best film is “Maxine Hong Kingston: Talking Story” (1990), directed and edited by Joan Saffa and available throughCross Current Media in San Francisco. In the 1980s her first two books were the most frequently taught texts on college campuses by any living American writer. In 1991, recognizing her popularity in the curriculum, the Modern Language Association published Approaches to Teaching Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, placing her in a series that includes such authors as Homer, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dante, Goethe, Milton, and Camus. As a final measure of her stature, The Woman Warrior may now be found on doctoral reading examination lists, including those at the University of Wisconsin.
