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Maxine Hong Kingston

Maxine Hong Kingston
Usage Conditions Apply
Artist
Anthony Barboza, born 10 May 1944
Sitter
Maxine Hong Kingston, born 27 Oct 1940
Date
1989
Type
Photograph
Medium
Chromogenic print
Dimensions
Image: 26.7 x 27.3cm (10 1/2 x 10 3/4")
Sheet: 42 x 29.8cm (16 9/16 x 11 3/4")
Mat: 71.1 x 55.9cm (28 x 22")
Topic
Nature & Environment\Plant
Artwork
Architecture\Window
Maxine Hong Kingston: Female
Maxine Hong Kingston: Literature\Writer\Novelist
Maxine Hong Kingston: National Book Award
Maxine Hong Kingston: National Humanities Medal
Portrait
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Restrictions & Rights
Usage conditions apply
Copyright
© Anthony Barboza
Object number
NPG.2008.67
Exhibition Label
Born Stockton, California
Maxine Hong Kingston’s parents immigrated to the United States from China shortly before she was born. As a writer of both fiction and nonfiction, she has consistently turned to experiences of immigration and conveyed a sense of living between two distinct worlds.
In The Woman Warrior: Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976), she observes: “Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.” Responding to this idea, the book weaves folk tales through the lives of several generations of women in a Chinese American family. The Woman Warrior won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction as Kingston relied heavily on autobiographical elements. Shortly thereafter, she won the National Book Award for China Men (1980), a collection of vignettes focused on her male family members, whom she also featured in The Woman Warrior.
Nacida en Stockton, California
Los padres de Maxine Hong Kingston emigraron de China a Estados Unidos poco después de nacer ella. Como escritora de ficción y no-ficción, ha abordado las experiencias de la inmigración, explorando la sensación de vivir entre dos mundos distintos.
En La mujer guerrera: Memorias de una niñez entre fantasmas (1976), observa: “Los que somos de las primeras generaciones en Estados Unidos hemos tenido que descifrar cómo cabe en este país el mundo invisible que construyeron los emigrantes en torno a nuestra niñez”. El libro indaga en esta idea entretejiendo cuentos folclóricos con las vidas de varias generaciones de mujeres en una familia china- americana. La mujer guerrera ganó el Premio del Círculo Nacional de Críticos Literarios en no-ficción, ya que Kingston recurrió ampliamente a elementos autobiográficos. Poco después, Kingston ganó el Premio Nacional del Libro por China Men (1980), viñetas basadas en los hombres de su familia, que ya aparecen en La mujer guerrera.
Data Source
National Portrait Gallery
Location
Currently not on view