The Woman Warrior, China Men

Resumen del libro

Here--for the first time in one volume--are two classic, brilliantly original works on the experience of Chinese immigrants in America. In both books the acclaimed author mines her family's past and her culture's stories, weaving myth and memory to fashion works of enormous revelatory power.

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, is Kingston's disturbing and fiercely beautiful account of growing up Chinese-American in California. The young Kingston lives in two worlds: the America to which her parents have emigrated, a place inhabited by white "ghosts," and the China of her mother's "talk stories," a place haunted by the ghosts of the past. Her mother, who had been a doctor in China but in the United States is reduced to running a laundry, tells her daughter traditional tales of strong, wily women warriorstales-that clash puzzlingly with the real oppression of Chinese women. Kingston learns to fill in the mystifying spaces in her mother's stories with stories of her own, engaging her family's past and her own present with anger, imagination, and dazzling passion.

China Men, a National Book Award winner for fiction, is Kingston's unforgettable imaginative journey into the hearts and minds of generations of Chinese men in America, from those who worked on the transcontinental railroad in the 1840s to those who fought in Vietnam. Mixing vivid fables and legends, personal stories from her own family, and details of the historical hardships faced by Chinese immigrants in different times and places, Kingston illuminates their long, arduous search for the Gold Mountain.

Biografía del autor

x{0026}lt;p x{0026}lt;strong MAXINE HONG KINGSTONx{0026}lt;/strong es una escritora estadounidense hija de inmigrantes chinos. Sus padres dirigían una casa de juego en la década de 1940, cuando nació Maxine, y luego una lavandería donde Kingston y sus hermanos y hermanas trabajaban largas horas. Kingston se graduó en 1962 en Berkeley y, ese mismo año, se casó con el actor Earll Kingston, a quien había conocido en un curso de inglés. La pareja tiene un hijo, Joseph, que nació en 1963. Participaron activamente en actividades contra la guerra y en 1967 se establecieron en Hawái, donde Kingston ocupó varios puestos docentes. Regresaron a California diecisiete años después, cuando Kingston reanudó la enseñanza de escritura en la Universidad de California.x{0026}lt;/p