1/30/01

John Sanford, News Service (650) 736-2151; e-mail: jsanford@stanford.edu

Cheri Ross, associate director, Introduction to the Humanities: (650) 723-1620, cheri.ross@stanford.edu

Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior, to speak on campus Wednesday

Maxine Hong Kingston, author of the award-winning The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, is scheduled to talk about her work and answer questions from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 31, in Kresge Auditorium.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) Freshman Book Program. Preferred seating for freshmen will be available from 6 to 6:30 p.m.

Students enrolled in IHUM, a one-year course sequence that satisfies Area One of the General Education Requirements, each receive the same book, as a gift, at the end of the Fall Quarter. They are encouraged to read the book, think about it and discuss it with friends and roommates.

Later in the academic year, the book's author visits campus to talk to the students. In 1999, the freshman book was Arcadia, a play by Tom Stoppard, the celebrated playwright of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and co-writer of the film Shakespeare in Love. Stoppard came to the campus in January 2000.

The Woman Warrior, which combines autobiography and fiction, was published in 1976 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. The female narrator of the story is caught between the China of her mother's "talk-stories" and the America in which she lives.

Born in Stockton to Chinese immigrant parents, Kingston attended the University of California-Berkeley, where she earned her bachelor's degree in English in 1962 and a teaching credential in 1965. She also is the author of China Men (1980) and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989).

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By John Sanford