Summer Book Read
"The Woman Warrior" and "China Men"
by Maxine Hong Kingston
Delve into the stories of Chinese immigrants in America in this year's Summer Book Read selections. As in years past, everyone on campus - including first-year students - is invited to participate in the Summer Book Read. New Students are asked to read at least one of the books as their first assignment at Concordia. Both books will be discussed during Orientation and during the fall semester. The book read guide will assist you in preparing for these discussions.
Maxine Hong Kingston, honored by the National Book Foundation with its 2008 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, will be a speaker during National Book Awards at Concordia in the fall.
"The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts"
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
This is Kingston’s disturbing and fiercely beautiful account of growing up Chinese-American in California. The young Kingston lives in two worlds: the America to which her parents have emigrated, a place inhabited by white “ghosts,” and the China of her mother’s “talk stories,” a place haunted by the ghosts of the past.
Her mother, who had been a doctor in China but in the United States is reduced to running a laundry, tells her daughter traditional tales of strong, wily women warriors – tales that clash puzzlingly with the real oppression of Chinese women. Kingston learns to fill in the mystifying spaces in her mother’s stories with stories of her own, engaging her family’s past and her own present with anger, imagination and dazzling passion.
"China Men"
2008 National Book Award Winner for Fiction
Enjoy Kingston’s unforgettable, imaginative journey into the hearts and minds of generations of Chinese men in America, from those who worked on the transcontinental railroad in the 1840s, to those who fought in Vietnam. Mixing vivid fables and legends, personal stories from her own family, and details of the historical hardships faced by Chinese immigrants in different times and places, Kingston illuminates their long, arduous search for the Gold Mountain.
The Woman Warrior and China Men are available in one volume at the Cobber Bookstore.
Learn More:
• Summer Book Read History
Orientation
