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Maxine Hong Kingston

Maxine Hong Kingston Books

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China Men

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To Be the Poet

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“Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic the new way of seeing. I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation. I enjoy the simplicity. Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways and sidewalks. Give me plastics, periodical tables, t.v. dinners with vegetables no more complex than peas mixed with diced carrots. Shine floodlights into dark corners: no ghosts.”

American Dream
Book:The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
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“A new darkness pulled away the room, inked out flesh and outlined bones. My mother was wide awake again. She become sharply herself - bone, wire, antenna - but she was not afraid. She had been pared down like this before, when she had travelled up the mountains into rare snow - alone in white not unlike being alone in black. She had also sailed a boat safely between land and land.”

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Book:The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
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“To shut the door at the end of the workday, which does not spill over into evening. To throw away books after reading them so theydon't have to be dusted. To go through boxes on New Year's Eve and throw out half of what is inside. Sometimes for extravagance to pick a bunch of flowers for the one table. Other women besides me must have this daydream about a carefree life.”

YearsDoeBookEndsSometimesReadingWorkHalfDoorsFlowerPicksTablesSimplicityBoxesBunchEveningThis DayLeisureNew YearDaydreamingSpillsNew Years EveExtravaganceCarefreeFree Life
Author:Maxine Hong Kingston
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“I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes. Petals are bone marrow; pearls come from oysters. The dragon lives in the sky, ocean, marshes, and mountains; and the mountains are also its cranium. Its voice thunders and jingles like copper pans. It breathes fire and water; and sometimes the dragon is one, sometimes many.”

MindSometimesUniverseVoiceWaterRoomsFantasyFireSkyMountainOceanBonesBreatheDragonsParadoxPearlsThunderPetalsOystersMarrowCopperMarshesJinglesBone Marrow
Author:Maxine Hong Kingston
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“When we Chinese girls listened to the adults talk-story, we learned that we failed if we grew up to be but wives or slaves. We could be heroines, swordswomen. Even if she had to rage across all China, a swordswoman got even with anybody who hurt her family. Perhaps women were once so dangerous that they had to have their feet bound.”

IfsStoriesGirlHurtWifeFeetDangerousGrewGrew UpAdultsIndependenceSlaveBoundsChinaRageChineseHeroines
Book:The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
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“Chinese Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?”

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Book:Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston
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“Be careful what you say. It comes true. It comes true. I had to leave home in order to see the world logically, logic the new way of seeing. I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation. I enjoy the simplicity. Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways and sidewalks. Give me plastics, periodical tables, TV dinners with vegetables no more complex than peas mixed with diced carrots. Shine floodlights into dark corners: no ghosts.”

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Author:Maxine Hong Kingston
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“The swordswoman and I are not so dissimilar. May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them. What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are 'report a crime' and 'report to five families.' The reporting is the vengeance-not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words.”

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Book:The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
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