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Maxine Kingston

Biography


 California Standard 1.4 Students compare and contrast everyday life in different times and places around the world and recognize that some aspects of people, places, and things change over time while others stay the same.  

Maxine Hong Kingston was born in 1940 in Stockton, California. Her parents were Chinese immigrants. She grew up working long hours in her family's laundry business.

Maxine's mother told her stories about her past in China. Maxine Hong Kingston began writing these stories for people to read.

Maxine started writing as a child. She has said, "I began writing when I was nine.... I was in fourth grade and all of a sudden this poem started coming out of me."

She has worked hard and is now a well-known poet and writer.

 

Try This

Tour China's great sites. Click on an area to see a picture.

The Big Picture

Learn to count in Chinese. Print and color a book about counting.

Give An Example

What do writers do? Sometimes it can be hard to think of a really great story. Writers spend a lot of time thinking about what they want to write about. Writers sometimes write about themselves or they pretend to be someone else in a story.