Maxine Hong Kingston

Object Details

Artist

Anthony Barboza, born 10 May 1944

Sitter

Maxine Hong Kingston, born 27 Oct 1940

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.

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

1989

Object number

NPG.2008.67

Restrictions & Rights

Usage conditions apply

Copyright

© Anthony Barboza

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")

See more items in

National Portrait Gallery Collection

National Portrait Gallery

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

Record ID

npg_NPG.2008.67

Metadata Usage (text)

Usage conditions apply

GUID (Link to Original Record)

http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/sm44178a9a1-99a0-4c2d-8004-fa217dc717cb