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“You must not tell anyone,” her mother says on the first page of The Woman Warrior, and then tells her about an aunt in China who drowned herself in the family well. Maxine Hong Kingston, born in Stockton, California, in 1940 to Chinese immigrant parents, was 36 when that book came out in 1976 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. Its companion, China Men, won the National Book Award in 1981. She went on to write a picaresque novel set in 1960s San Francisco, essays from her years in Hawai‘i, a book rebuilt from a manuscript lost in a fire, and a memoir in verse. This guide covers her eight key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 8 key books · 1976–2011 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Maxine Hong Kingston’s best-known books are The Woman Warrior (1976), China Men (1980) and the novel Tripmaster Monkey (1989); her later work includes The Fifth Book of Peace (2003) and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (2011). Start with The Woman Warrior, then read China Men, which tells the men’s side of the same family.
Where to Start with Maxine Hong Kingston
If you want her defining book
→ The Woman Warrior (1976) — the 1976 memoir of a girlhood among ghosts.
If you want the family history and the railroad
→ China Men (1980) — the fathers and grandfathers who came to America.
If you want a novel
→ Tripmaster Monkey (1989) — Wittman Ah Sing in 1960s San Francisco.
If you want her late, reflective work
→ I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (2011) — a memoir in verse begun at 65.
8 Maxine Hong Kingston Books, in Order
The Woman Warrior
Five linked pieces about growing up Chinese American in Stockton, California, built on her mother’s stories. It opens with “No Name Woman”, the aunt in China who drowned herself after bearing a child outside marriage, retells the legend of the swordswoman Fa Mu Lan, and follows her mother, Brave Orchid, who trained as a doctor in China. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and is widely assigned in schools and universities.
China Men
The men’s side of the family: a great-grandfather on the sugar plantations of Hawai‘i, a grandfather who helped build the railroad through the Sierra Nevada, her father’s arrival in America, and a brother who served in the Vietnam War. Like The Woman Warrior, it mixes history, myth and memoir, and it includes a plain summary of the laws that excluded Chinese immigrants. It won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1981 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Hawai‘i One Summer
Short essays written in the summer of 1978, when The New York Times asked her for a weekly column, the “Hers” column. They come from the decade the Kingstons lived in Hawai‘i, from 1967, where she taught school in Honolulu. It first appeared in 1987 and was reissued in a wider edition in 1998.
Tripmaster Monkey
Her first novel follows Wittman Ah Sing, a young Chinese American Berkeley graduate and would-be playwright, through San Francisco in the 1960s as he plans an enormous play. He is named after Walt Whitman and modelled on the Monkey King of the Chinese classic Journey to the West; Amy Tan believed he was partly based on Frank Chin. It won the PEN West Award for Fiction.
To Be the Poet
Based on her William E. Massey Lectures at Harvard in 2000, this short book describes her decision to leave prose for a freer life as a poet. She tries to turn daily events, travel and memories of her late parents into poems, and asks poets such as Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg for advice, mixing prose with short poems.
The Fifth Book of Peace
In 1991, shortly after her father’s funeral, a fire in the Oakland hills destroyed her house and the only manuscript of The Fourth Book of Peace, a sequel to Tripmaster Monkey. This book tells of the fire, partly rewrites the lost novel with Wittman Ah Sing in Hawai‘i, and ends with the writing workshops for war veterans she began afterwards, inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace
An anthology Kingston edited of writing by members of her veterans’ workshops: veterans and others who lived through war, writing about what they saw. It received a Northern California Book Award special award in publishing in 2007.
I Love a Broad Margin to My Life
A book-length memoir in free verse, begun around her 65th birthday in 2005 and written over four years; the title comes from Thoreau. It covers ageing, her many trips to China, her arrest with Alice Walker at a 2003 anti-war protest outside the White House, and Wittman Ah Sing imagining a life in China. It ends with her saying the urge to write is going away.
In What Order to Read Maxine Hong Kingston
Read The Woman Warrior and China Men as a pair, in that order: the first is the women of the family, the second the men, and many of the same people and places return. Neither depends on the other, but together they give the whole family history.
Tripmaster Monkey stands alone, but read it before The Fifth Book of Peace, which brings Wittman Ah Sing back after the fire destroyed his planned sequel. To Be the Poet and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life show her late move from prose to verse and are best read last.
A reading path
1. The Woman Warrior (1976)
2. China Men (1980)
3. Tripmaster Monkey (1989)
4. The Fifth Book of Peace (2003)
5. I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (2011)
Everything Else Maxine Hong Kingston Published
Beyond the 8 key books: 2 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other books and collected editions
2
2 books · 1987–2022
- 1987Through the Black Curtainshort prose
- 2022The Woman Warrior, China Men, Tripmaster Monkey, Other WritingsLibrary of America edition, edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The years · 1940–2023
Quick facts about Maxine Hong Kingston
- Known for
- Maxine Hong Kingston is known for The Woman Warrior (1976), which mixed memoir, myth and her mother’s stories into a new way of telling Chinese American lives.
- 1940
- Born in Stockton, California
- 1962
- BA in English, UC Berkeley
- 1991
- Oakland fire destroys her house and manuscript
- 2014
- National Medal of Arts
- 2023
- Emerson-Thoreau Medal
- Born
- 27 October 1940, Stockton, California, the third of eight children of Chinese immigrant parents
- Education
- University of California, Berkeley, BA in English, 1962
- Married
- The actor Earll Kingston, in 1962; their son Joseph was born in 1963
- Taught
- Schools in Hawai‘i from 1967, then UC Berkeley, where she is emerita
- Honours
- National Humanities Medal (1997), National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (2008), National Medal of Arts (2013, presented 2014)
- Lives
- Oakland, California
The red mark is 1976: The Woman Warrior, her first book.
How Maxine Hong Kingston Writes: Memoir Through Myth
Kingston starts from “talk-story”, the stories her mother told while she grew up, and treats them as material rather than fact. In The Woman Warrior the narrator does not know how her aunt became pregnant, so she imagines several versions; the legend of Fa Mu Lan becomes a fantasy in which she herself is the swordswoman. Memory, rumour and myth sit side by side, and the book says openly which is which.
Her books cross genres on purpose. China Men mixes family stories with Chinese legend and a dry, factual chapter on the exclusion laws; Tripmaster Monkey is a novel whose hero is named after Walt Whitman and modelled on the Monkey King of Chinese legend. The point is that no single form, and no single tradition, fits the people she writes about.
From the 1990s her work turns outward and towards peace. After the 1991 fire she ran writing workshops for war veterans, and both The Fifth Book of Peace and the anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace grew out of them. Her late books, To Be the Poet and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, move into verse.
Watch
Maxine Hong Kingston and Viet Thanh Nguyen in conversation
Kingston talks with her former student Viet Thanh Nguyen about her life and work in May 2022, marking the Library of America edition of her writing.
Frequently asked questions about Maxine Hong Kingston’s books
How many books has Maxine Hong Kingston written?
Around ten. Eight are the key books on this page, from The Woman Warrior (1976) to I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (2011), one of them an anthology she edited. The others are a short 1987 prose work, Through the Black Curtain, and the 2022 Library of America edition of her main works.
What are Maxine Hong Kingston’s books in order?
The Woman Warrior (1976), China Men (1980), Hawai‘i One Summer (1987), Tripmaster Monkey (1989), To Be the Poet (2002), The Fifth Book of Peace (2003), Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2006, as editor) and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (2011).
Where should I start with Maxine Hong Kingston?
With The Woman Warrior, her first and best-known book, then China Men, which tells the men’s side of the same family. If you prefer fiction, start with Tripmaster Monkey.
What is Maxine Hong Kingston’s most famous book?
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976). It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and is widely taught in schools and universities. In 2019 it was the PBS NewsHour and New York Times book club pick, chosen by Celeste Ng.
Is The Woman Warrior a memoir or a novel?
It was published as a memoir, but Kingston mixes her own childhood with her mother’s stories, imagined scenes and Chinese legend, such as the swordswoman Fa Mu Lan. That mix is a large part of why the book was praised, and why it was criticised.
Why was The Woman Warrior criticised?
The playwright and novelist Frank Chin, among others, accused Kingston of changing traditional Chinese stories to appeal to white readers and of presenting a “fake” Chinese American culture. The critics Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Katheryn Fong also questioned her portrayals. In a 1990 interview Kingston said male critics believed minority women writers had succeeded by collaborating with the white establishment, and that the women had not answered back to avoid division.
What prizes has Maxine Hong Kingston won?
The Woman Warrior won the National Book Critics Circle Award, China Men the National Book Award in 1981, and Tripmaster Monkey the PEN West Award for Fiction. She received the National Humanities Medal in 1997, the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2008 and the National Medal of Arts, presented by Barack Obama in 2014.
Has The Woman Warrior been adapted?
Yes, for the stage. Deborah Rogin adapted Kingston’s books into the play The Woman Warrior, which premiered at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 1994 and then played in Boston and Los Angeles.
What happened to The Fourth Book of Peace?
It burned. In 1991 a fire in the Oakland hills destroyed Kingston’s house and the only manuscript of the novel, a sequel to Tripmaster Monkey. The Fifth Book of Peace (2003) tells the story of the fire and partly rewrites the lost book.
Is Maxine Hong Kingston still alive?
Yes. She was born on 27 October 1940 in Stockton, California, and lives in Oakland. In 2023 she received the Emerson-Thoreau Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Footnotes
- Maxine Hong Kingston — Wikipedia
- The Fifth Book of Peace — Wikipedia
- Making room for a broad margin to life, in verse — NPR, 2011
- Celeste Ng and Maxine Hong Kingston answer your questions about The Woman Warrior — PBS NewsHour, 2019
- ‘Woman Warrior’ finds a voice — The Christian Science Monitor, 1994
- Maxine Hong Kingston and Viet Thanh Nguyen — Library of America
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
““You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you.””
— Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (1976), the opening line
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