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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I'd read the author's previous book, "Warrior Woman," and enjoyed it, and had high hopes for this one. The book combines true stories about the men in her family with Chinese myths and family legends. Her writing is beautiful. My only criticism that makes this a 4-star book instead of a 5-star book is that it does feel a bit jumbled or thrown together rather than all the pieces feeling like one coherent whole. Overall, though, definitely worth reading.
This is the companion piece to The Woman Warrior, and through the same weaving of fact and fiction, myth and memoir, she tells the story of the men in her family, her father, her grandfathers, her brother who served in Vietnam.
I feel like this one was a little more straightforward than The Woman Warrior, but it's important to read both of them, as they were originally supposed to be published together, I think.
I feel like this one was a little more straightforward than The Woman Warrior, but it's important to read both of them, as they were originally supposed to be published together, I think.
I read this for a class in 2020, on Asian American literature. I've pasted different parts of my essay below, so I can remember what I thought about the book. :) I overall remember being very impressed by Kingston's writing style, and ultimately chose to write about her book over everything else for the final paper.
“I'll tell you what I suppose from your silences and few words, and you can tell me that I'm mistaken. You'll just have to speak up with the real stories if I've got you wrong.” (Kingston 15)
This powerful sentence appears in the first 20 pages of Maxine Hong Kingston’s book, China Men. Throughout the novel, we see Kingston manipulate facts, and propose multiple possibilities regarding the same event. Kingston’s manipulated presentation of her family history parallels the way the mistreatment of Chinese people in this country has been hidden and distorted. I will specifically analyze the final chapter of the book, On Listening; Kingston’s proposal to the reader to carefully and critically examine not only the book they have just finished, but the history the United States claims as true. Kingston’s approach to truth is a revision of her history as she seeks to reconcile the erasure of her cultural history. Kingston hopes not only to shed light on the loss of documentation of Chinese history in the United States, but to create a better future for herself through her own invention.
Throughout Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men, it is difficult to discern truth from reality. Her father may have been born in 1891, 1903, or 1915. He may have come as a paper son, or hidden on a boat, or as a legal laborer via Angel Island. In another story, a group of children seem unable to identify their real father. Even their mother concedes, “He did look like BaBa, though, didn’t he? From the back, almost exactly.” (Kingston 3) What is the purpose behind this confusion? These examples, and many others like it, are intentional holes Kingston has left within her stories about her intricately woven family nest for us to find, examine, explore, and interpret. Her method of leaving several possibilities open to being “the truth” exposes much of Chinese immigration history in the United States. It is impossible to deny that the United States has not been entirely honest about its past. There are holes in our history as well.
Kingston has chosen to rewrite traditional stories, claim American tales as Chinese (such as Robinson Crusoe as Lo Bun Sun), and destabilize her own family history in a way that challenges authority and gives voice to those who have been erased or silenced. By acknowledging these stereotypes through her stories, she reclaims them, and gives her readers the history of what she knows. Kingston’s choice to take on these depictions of Chinese people and make them her own takes the power away from the oppressor, especially as many of these stories depict her own family. We see Kingston directly address the use of opioids, and the concept of “typical” Asian gender roles throughout the book, in an exploratory fashion that details her own experiences and observations. While the United States has historically exaggerated and falsified the image of the Chinese people, Kingston seeks to create her ancestor’s true history, not through “facts,” but through her own understanding and imagination. She sees these missing parts of her past, and takes it on as a challenge to define what it means to be Chinese-American. Kingston is not upholding negative stereotypes, but rediscovering them for herself, and making up for this loss of her history.
“I'll tell you what I suppose from your silences and few words, and you can tell me that I'm mistaken. You'll just have to speak up with the real stories if I've got you wrong.” (Kingston 15)
This powerful sentence appears in the first 20 pages of Maxine Hong Kingston’s book, China Men. Throughout the novel, we see Kingston manipulate facts, and propose multiple possibilities regarding the same event. Kingston’s manipulated presentation of her family history parallels the way the mistreatment of Chinese people in this country has been hidden and distorted. I will specifically analyze the final chapter of the book, On Listening; Kingston’s proposal to the reader to carefully and critically examine not only the book they have just finished, but the history the United States claims as true. Kingston’s approach to truth is a revision of her history as she seeks to reconcile the erasure of her cultural history. Kingston hopes not only to shed light on the loss of documentation of Chinese history in the United States, but to create a better future for herself through her own invention.
Throughout Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men, it is difficult to discern truth from reality. Her father may have been born in 1891, 1903, or 1915. He may have come as a paper son, or hidden on a boat, or as a legal laborer via Angel Island. In another story, a group of children seem unable to identify their real father. Even their mother concedes, “He did look like BaBa, though, didn’t he? From the back, almost exactly.” (Kingston 3) What is the purpose behind this confusion? These examples, and many others like it, are intentional holes Kingston has left within her stories about her intricately woven family nest for us to find, examine, explore, and interpret. Her method of leaving several possibilities open to being “the truth” exposes much of Chinese immigration history in the United States. It is impossible to deny that the United States has not been entirely honest about its past. There are holes in our history as well.
Kingston has chosen to rewrite traditional stories, claim American tales as Chinese (such as Robinson Crusoe as Lo Bun Sun), and destabilize her own family history in a way that challenges authority and gives voice to those who have been erased or silenced. By acknowledging these stereotypes through her stories, she reclaims them, and gives her readers the history of what she knows. Kingston’s choice to take on these depictions of Chinese people and make them her own takes the power away from the oppressor, especially as many of these stories depict her own family. We see Kingston directly address the use of opioids, and the concept of “typical” Asian gender roles throughout the book, in an exploratory fashion that details her own experiences and observations. While the United States has historically exaggerated and falsified the image of the Chinese people, Kingston seeks to create her ancestor’s true history, not through “facts,” but through her own understanding and imagination. She sees these missing parts of her past, and takes it on as a challenge to define what it means to be Chinese-American. Kingston is not upholding negative stereotypes, but rediscovering them for herself, and making up for this loss of her history.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The book has a powerful mix of biographical, historical and mythical narratives, creating a cohesive statement. I think it's easy to forget the marginalization of Asian Americans people, especially in this era when they're praised for being the model minority, but Hong Kingston beautifully traces this oppression throughout AAPI history. She also does a good job of creating emotionally vulnerable male characters.
Various stories, some more interesting than others. Written in a style I didn't quite identify with. I liked the stories about family history so much more than the modern literary "hey here's someone with a severe mental illness, everything they say is also a metaphor for society, now let's let them ramble for 20 pages!" tales.
The following review response was an assignment turned in for class in the Fall 2021 semester at the University of Iowa for a World building class taught by Amelia Gramling. The assignment asked students to write a reading response (with any topic of interest) on the novel China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston. This book, and the following paper, had a profound impact on my understanding of world building. It formed new insights that I used to analyze other books I read this year. Because of that, it would be only right to include this paper for China Men and China Men as part of my blog and review page. This paper, and thus the following review response, is an original piece of work.
Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men opens like a fairytale: “Once upon a time, a man named Tang Ao, looking for the Gold Mountain, crossed an ocean, and came upon the Land of Women” (1). It is this tale that sets the tone for the rest of Hong Kingston’s world building. The function of this opening fairytale is to show readers that the worlds we are about to be introduced to are both magical and cruel.
The opening fairytale introduces us to an image that will be repeated throughout the text—the Gold Mountain. In the opening paragraph, we are exposed to the curiosity and wonder surrounding the Gold Mountain, which is an ideal that remains undefined yet is no less important or magical-seeming the deeper we read into the novel. The rest of the fairytale builds up the cruelty of the Land of Women. Once Tang Ao is taken in by the women, they transform him into one, by binding his feet, piercing his ears, and by applying makeup to his face (2). Each of these actions is vividly described, and its relationship to pain is crucial to understanding the cruelty of what it is to be a woman.
The description of America is created by the ways outsiders perceive how Americans behave. Americans are “‘honest,’” “‘very good at organization,’” “‘careless,’” and “‘forgetful’” (47). All of the snippets of conversation the father overhears boil down to “‘Something new happens every day [in America]” (47). Before the father ever sees America, he is exposed to multiple different interpretations of its inhabitants. Some of these traits are positive, whereas others are meant to be negatively connoted, yet they all work to build a complete idea of an American. Showing that Americans are both strange and otherworldly-type creatures that have some negative traits demonstrates that America, too, is just as magical and cruel as the fairytale Land of Women.
And so it is important to note how opening with a myth or fairytale colors our understanding of all the other mystical places to be introduced within a text.
Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men opens like a fairytale: “Once upon a time, a man named Tang Ao, looking for the Gold Mountain, crossed an ocean, and came upon the Land of Women” (1). It is this tale that sets the tone for the rest of Hong Kingston’s world building. The function of this opening fairytale is to show readers that the worlds we are about to be introduced to are both magical and cruel.
The opening fairytale introduces us to an image that will be repeated throughout the text—the Gold Mountain. In the opening paragraph, we are exposed to the curiosity and wonder surrounding the Gold Mountain, which is an ideal that remains undefined yet is no less important or magical-seeming the deeper we read into the novel. The rest of the fairytale builds up the cruelty of the Land of Women. Once Tang Ao is taken in by the women, they transform him into one, by binding his feet, piercing his ears, and by applying makeup to his face (2). Each of these actions is vividly described, and its relationship to pain is crucial to understanding the cruelty of what it is to be a woman.
The description of America is created by the ways outsiders perceive how Americans behave. Americans are “‘honest,’” “‘very good at organization,’” “‘careless,’” and “‘forgetful’” (47). All of the snippets of conversation the father overhears boil down to “‘Something new happens every day [in America]” (47). Before the father ever sees America, he is exposed to multiple different interpretations of its inhabitants. Some of these traits are positive, whereas others are meant to be negatively connoted, yet they all work to build a complete idea of an American. Showing that Americans are both strange and otherworldly-type creatures that have some negative traits demonstrates that America, too, is just as magical and cruel as the fairytale Land of Women.
And so it is important to note how opening with a myth or fairytale colors our understanding of all the other mystical places to be introduced within a text.