China Men [Paperback]

Maxine Hong Kingston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 23, 1989

The author chronicles the lives of three generations of Chinese men in America, woven from memory, myth and fact. Here's a storyteller's tale of what they endured in a strange new land.

Editorial Reviews

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The author chronicles the lives of three generations of Chinese men in America, woven from memory, myth and fact. Here's a storyteller's tale of what they endured in a strange new land.

About the Author

Maxine Hong Kingston is the daughter of Chinese immigrants who operated a gambling house in the 1940s, when Maxine was born, and then a laundry where Kingston and her brothers and sisters toiled long hours. Kingston graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1962 from the University of California at Berkeley, and, in the same year, married actor Earll Kingston, whom she had met in an English course. The couple has one son, Joseph, who was born in 1963. They were active in antiwar activities in Berkeley, but in 1967 the Kingstons headed for Japan to escape the increasing violence and drugs of the antiwar movement. They settled instead in Hawai‘i, where Kingston took various teaching posts. They returned to California seventeen years later, and Kingston resumed teaching writing at the University of California, Berkeley.

While in Hawai‘i, Kingston wrote her first two books. The Woman Warrior, her first book, was published in 1976 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award, making her a literary celebrity at age thirty-six. Her second book, China Men, earned the National Book Award. Still today, both books are widely taught in literature and other classes. Kingston has earned additional awards, including the PEN West Award for Fiction for Tripmaster Monkey, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and the National Humanities Medal, which was conferred by President Clinton, as well as the title “Living Treasure of Hawai‘i” bestowed by a Honolulu Buddhist church. Her most recent books include a collection of essays, Hawai‘i One Summer, and latest novel, The Fifth Book of Peace. Kingston is currently Senior Lecturer Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (April 23, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679723285
• ISBN-13: 978-0679723288
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #61,660 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #10 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Asian American
  • #20 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Chinese
  • #90 in Books > History > Asia > China

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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Words of Chinese Wisdom...You don't want to miss this one!, January 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: China Men (Paperback)

If you want to learn about a great, five-thousand-years-old culture of the east meeting the west, China Men is definitely the right book for you. Maxine Hong Kingston has skillfully woven an epic of Chinese history in America in the most creative way. From the early Chinese immigration to the present day, the Chinese's dream, experience, suffering, and success in America is wonderfully told through many generations. Unlike many historical novels, this book is told from the Chinese perspective right down to the details from character to character. This book is written so impressively eloquent and truth to the bones that I dare say a native Chinese might not even know as much about his/her own culture. From Alaska to Hawaii, Kingston has covered every corner of the U.S. that Chinese immigrants have gone. The characters also added a little Chinese wisdom now and then in a day when working on the railroad or fighting in the Vietnam War.

Aside from extremely in-depth in history and Chinese culture, the stories are especially fun to read. I can only describe them as totally fantastic, bizarre, and unbelievable.Do you know the Chinese had found a place called"Land of Women" ? There was also communist Uncle Bun who suspected the U.S. government was plotting to poison him by collecting garbage from every door and hiding them in his food. Yes, these interesting stories have significant meaning related to the actual history. Not all of them are funny though; there are also stories that are terrifyingly shocking such as the inhuman tortures the Japanese did to Chinese and the bias laws America had toward Chinese. There are also side stories and fairy tales of all kinds from Chinese ghost stories to a lesson by Li Fu-yen which added a savor to the book. Anyone who read China Men would view life different than before.

I recommend China Men to people who have a desire to understand Chinese culture and learn how America culture affected them. However,the book is so abstract and arbitrary that it is hard to understand. Warning, it is not an easy book to read. If you feel you are confused, read several times more. There are many amazing truths of life in China Men, which are subtle but such a waste to miss.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating jumble of memoir, fable, and reporting, February 16, 2003

By 

John Hartnett - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: China Men (Paperback)

In China Men, Kingston took me on a ride all over the literary landscape. In general, I thought her book was an interesting tossed salad of memoir, fable, reporting, and poetry. As a reader, it reminded me of a scrapbook of family stories, newspaper articles, heritage legends -- all assembled in one place.

Interestingly, Kingston begins the book with two distinctive chapters. Unlike the rest of the book, these two chapters are relatively homogenous, sticking with one form, voice, structure and tone throughout. The first chapter is the fable of the Land of Women. I didn?t understand this chapter until the last sentences, when it seemed as though Kingston was saying that coming to North America emasculated the Chinese men who made the journey to the Gold Mountain.

If Kingston?s main theme is that the journey to North America emasculated the Chinese Men, then from a reader?s perspective I?m not sure if the book delivers on this promise. To put a fable with a very obvious moral at the beginning of the book seems to me to set up a contract with the reader about the subject or theme of the book. Although, Kingston explores many different aspects of the Chinese experience in North America, and even starts to explore the ways that China Men were oppressed, I?m not sure she completely proves her case in my mind. I could be wrong, however.

Interestingly, the second chapter of the book is another short one, this time a nearly pure piece of memoir. Alone, this chapter seems to set up the author?s own relationship with Chinese men. By mistaking another man for her father, she seems to be saying from the beginning of the book that from her perspective Chinese men are nearly interchangeable. But interestingly, she isn?t the only one who makes the mistake. All the children in that scene mistake the strange man for their father. I like this chapter placed here because it contrasts nicely with the fable/story in the first chapter. The first chapter is told at a distance by a storyteller/narrator. The second chapter is told first person from our main narrator?s voice.

Kingston returns to this theme several more times in the book. On page 217, she remarks that one of her Uncles looks just like her father. Interestingly, Uncle Bun is also completely forgotten, erased from her sister?s memory only a few years after he leaves. Kingston often hints at how distant and interchangeable the China Men were to her and to the women of her family. At other times she explores her narrator?s perceptions that China Men have no heart, no emotions.

One of Kingston?s greatest strengths, in my opinion, is her ability to weave in all sorts of other stories into the narrative of her story -- presenting a mosaic of memoirs, possibilities, facts, essays, fables, legends, ghost stories, scenes and reporting -- that all add up to a complete picture of the lives of the China Men who came to the United States. On page 49, she starts one version of a trip to the US with, ?I think this is the journey you don?t tell me:? She then recounts the tale of the father?s arrival in the US as a stowaway. But like The French Lieutenant?s Woman, she (Kingston) also gives us another, more ordinary version of the father?s emigration. I don?t know which one is ?real? and which one is imagined and, frankly, I don?t care. The fact that some Chinese used each of these methods is credible enough to keep my disbelief suspended and keep me in the story.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Compliment to Kingston's "The Woman Warrior", July 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: China Men (Paperback)

After reading Kingston's "The Woman Warrior," I thought I'd read "China Men." I am not disapointed at all. "China Men" is an excellent biographical work that recounts the lives of Chinese men in America from the 1840s to the Vietnam War. Although Kingston uses as much Chinese myth in this book as she does in "The Woman Warrior," she apparently decided to keep the mythology and biography more separated. Even so, Kingston's stories and the way in which she recounts them is absolutely splendid.