A Melus Interview: Maxine Hong Kingston

Maxine Hong Ungston is the author of three books which integrate her ancestral Chinese tradition with American culture, life styles and literatures. The Woman Warrior, published in 1976, won a National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, and was enthusiastically acclaimed. China Men, published in 1981, won the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, an encyclopedic novel, was published in 1989. Shortly after Tripmaster Monkey came out, Maxine Hong Kingston read at the Living Writers Series, which I coordinate at San Diego State University. We spent a rich day together, and this inteview is the result of our discussion. Reprinted with permission from the September, 1989, issue of Poetry Flash. Interviewer. The opening chapter of Tripmaster Monkey made me cry. Kingston: Really? I'm so glad. Interviewer: You're glad you made me cry? Kingston: Because everybody is saying it's tough, or they're saying, "That Wittman has such an obnoxious personality." I am so glad it brings out a softer emotion. Interviewer: Well, I recognize that squalor, that desperation. Being an unemployed poet, going through life in San Francisco where the immigrants are making their dream. I remember sitting in coffee shops, writing up my resume while the immigrants were out there working hard and buying their houses, working towards this |dream.' I said, how have I lost that dream? I recognize that desperation in Wittman. And those piles and piles of unfinished poems in the false bottom of his Gold Mountain Theater truck... Kingston: That dream that he's gonna be a poet. You know, lately I've met new immigrants that have been coming in, and they are so different than my parents. I've met a whole bunch of brand-new people who are musicians, and their strength and their music is so strong. They come here looking for part-time jobs. They don't want to open a restaurant or laundry, but they will take a menial job in a restaurant in order to practice their music. And their dream ... they've come here with the ancient instruments - their erh hus and yuehs [2 string fiddles and moon guitars], and they want to introduce American people to this music. And they think they can introduce those ancient instruments and make music and compose and make a career Interviewer: Let's talk about the opening chapter. Why Wittman Ah Sing ... and not Wilma Ah Lan? Why a male protagonist this time? That surprised me when I opened the book. I wasn't expecting a male protagonist. Kingston: Oh, many reasons. One of them is that my life as a writer had been a long struggle with pronouns. For 30 years I wrote in the first person singular. At a certain point I was thinking that I was self-centered and egotistical, solipsistic, and not very developed as a human being, nor as an artist, because I could only see from this one point of view. I was only interested in myself. So for 30 years I did that - all my poems, my prose, evexything that I wrote. And then in about the fourth chapter of The Woman Warrior I felt the claustrophobia of that very strongly. I thought I had to overcome this self-centeredness. I guess what I'm saying is that I think you can't write well unless you're a good human being. That you cannot fake wisdom, or good values, in a book. You have to be a good person in order to write that way. So about three-quarters of the way through The Woman Warrior I was thinking, I have to care about other people more than I do. And so, very artificially, I wrote a chapter that's done with an omniscient narrator. So I could use a third person. That's the chapter about my mother and her sister going to Los Angeles to reclaim that bigamist husband. Interviewer: That was a wonderful vignette. Kingston: I liked it because it really fell into place as a classical short story shape. …