Maxine Hong Kingston

Maxine Hong Kingston is the author of the biographical text. When the text includes fictive elements or fictional anecdotes, Kingston acts as the narrator or as the re-teller of anecdotes narrated to her. Kingston was born October 1940 in Stockton, California, to Thomas Edison ("Ed") Hong and Chew Ying Lan, who is not named in the text. She was the third of eight siblings, and the oldest surviving child of the family. Kingston was named after Maxine, a Caucasian gambler, who was perceived as very lucky. Kingston graduated from Berkeley in 1962, got married, and taught school from 1965 to 1967. In 1967 Kingston, with her husband, left the Continental United States for Hawaii to remove herself from violent West Coast anti-war demonstrations and rampant drug use. She wrote the text China Man, which was published in 1980.

Kingston is a major person in the text only inasmuch as she is the...