Maxine Hong Kingston

Yeah, respectable, my day job that I would try to pursue until I could become a writer.

In the notes that you sent to us before coming here today, you mentioned Maxine Hong Kingston, a teacher that you had at Berkeley, who you're describing in these notes as a role model.

In what way?

Maxine Hong Kingston had published a book called The Woman Warrior in 1976, which was a landmark book in American literature because it was a major account of Chinese immigrant life, but also a feminist text that became very influential.

She's an American writer of Chinese heritage.

Right, exactly.

I would sit just a few feet away from her every day, about the same distance I'm sitting from you right now.

And every day I would fall asleep.

And, and so I looked at it.

I said, "I, I, I get to, to write with Baldwin, Carlos Bulosan, who was inspired by Richard Wright, Morrison, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Maxine Hong Kingston.

I get to write with them."

Mm-hmm.

And it's, it, their, the experience of growing up Asian American is entirely different than these white kids.

And, and the other thing is, you know, there's a passage in Maxine Hong Kingston's Woman Warrior, which is probably the most famous book by an Asian American author, and she talks about how at public school, the Chinese kids were quiet and well-behaved.

And she says, "But when we got to Chinese school on Sunda- Saturday, we were loud and boisterous and, you know, and personalities came out." So again, the Harvard admissions office is not considering maybe Asians mute their personality in the face of whiteness in order to be safe, in order to not be, to stand out, right? And it's only amongst themselves that they're actually themselves.

You know, their, their true personalities come out.

She wasn't from China.

She was distinctly Asian American, and so was Maxine Hong Kingston, uh, from the '60s and '70s.

And I thought, "These women sound like me," because I don't come from overseas.

I was-