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| Maxine Hong Kingston |
| 湯婷婷 |
| 圖片來源：http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/KINGSTONmaxinehong.html |
| 主要文類：Novel |
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湯婷婷
1940-
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Julia Hsieh 謝佩璇
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| 備受注目並被夏威夷視為「州寶」的湯婷婷，在首部著作出版之後即受到全美、全球關注。她的小說不僅很快登上暢銷小說排行榜，並且讀者遍及全球。她的作品風格、她在作品中的身分認同、作品中的題材與引用故事來源等各方面都讓世界對這位華裔美籍作家感到驚嘆，並廣泛討論她的作品。 |
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 早年生活
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童年暨家庭背景 |
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湯氏的英文名字瑪克辛取自其父親工作的牌屋裡一位牌運特別好的 金髮 女士之名，湯氏在湯家六名子女之中排行老大。身為第一代美籍華人，湯氏的父母親是歷經辛苦來自中國的移民。父親早年為接受傳統教育、帶有犬儒主義氣質的讀書人，移民到美國後，他首先在加州落腳，在洗衣店裡工作賺取生活費並同時郵寄資助仍在中國的妻子勇蘭和兩個孩子。他與勇蘭所生的兩名子女於中國早夭之後，勇蘭獨立生活，努力學醫直到丈夫將其接到美國，開始新生活。勇蘭棄醫之後，在加州隨丈夫一同在洗衣店裡工作並且在農地裡幫忙，已漸漸步入中年的她在四十多歲的時候生下湯婷婷，為湯家在美國的新家庭開始新的一頁。勇蘭給予湯氏的教育、人格培養等等皆對於湯氏的作品、寫作生涯有著深遠的影響。 |
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教育背景暨成年生活 |
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湯氏的童年並不特別的順利，初進入學校就讀時，她對於自己的語言、家庭背景以及種種與其他當地學生的不同之處而顯得生疏而膽怯。學前教育並不順遂的湯氏在此後的學習成長特別迅速，中學畢業之後，她以極優異的成績申請到加州大學柏克萊分校的全額獎學金繼續學業。初進柏克萊時，湯氏主修理工科系，卻在不久之後輾轉進入英文系，並得到英文學士學位。在大學就讀期間，她認識了額爾．金斯頓，兩人在畢業之後隨即結為連理。一九六三年，湯氏懷孕產下其子喬瑟夫，並與身為演員的丈夫在夏威夷建立新家庭。在夏威夷，湯氏在中學裡教授英文與數學，並且開始有計畫的寫作生涯。
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成為舉世皆曉的暢銷作家
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一九七六年，湯婷婷首部作品《女鬥士》問世，為她贏得美國年度書評獎非小說類獎項。這位致力寫作的華裔作家在第一部作品同時獲得其他文學類獎項，並且很快的，她的作品以二十種以上不同語言的翻譯本迅速在各國的文學界造成話題。 |
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寫作風格/口述傳統 |
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湯氏讓世界驚奇她流暢而有力的說故事者角色的同時，她也被書評她不分文類，模糊小說、非小說的分類，同時也模糊回憶錄、成長小說的界線，但同時她的作品也受到不少書評對於她藉流暢的故事，寫實的描述早期美國華人移民所受的苦難、內心掙扎以及主人翁雙重文化影響之下產生的矛盾衝突，給予很高的評價。
由母親以及其他多位女性親屬口述傳承的家庭故事或者中國民間故事、傳說是湯氏對中國文化歷史主要的印象。儘管也有人（特別是一些華裔美籍評論）抨擊並質疑她作品中用以依據建構故事主體的傳說、歷史故事實是失真、不可靠的來源，湯氏藉著其書中的角色寫實的呈現文化衝突與連結，並且添加許多理想、幻想的場景，使得她的作品呈現出與眾不同的多元卻和諧的畫面。 |
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她的作品 |
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湯氏的第一部著作《女鬥士：鬼神之中成長的女孩回憶錄》首先在一九七六年問世，主要描述主人翁在成長過程中受到其母勇蘭的故事以及華人教養方式影響的長成敘述。藉此部作品，讀者了解一個華裔美人成長過程所受待遇與經歷。故事的主人翁小女孩在母親勇蘭和許多老一輩的華人移民的故事、口述文化影響下，一方面在美國本土學校受教育，另一方面在家受到傳統而保守的華人價值觀教導，所受到的衝擊造成她在身分認同上的矛盾衝突。作者講述這名在封閉的華人父權社會中，被認為聲音有缺陷、受欺侮嘲笑的小女孩如何努力，與來自古老中國的母親一樣，在新世界這個與家鄉迥然不同的生活環境、社經地位中，極力尋求突破困境地生活著；書中並刻畫各個女性角色在美國這塊新大陸上，如何在傳統故舊的社群中學習新事物並求得一個傳統與現代之間的平衡點。一九八○年湯氏推出第二部作品《中國佬》，描寫旅居異鄉的中國人為新大陸開疆破土，卻在心靈與肉體上承受莫大考驗：壓力、空虛以及遙遙無期的歸鄉路。故事主人翁雖然是男性，主要的情節卻仍然有女性敘述及觀點。湯氏承續上一作品，將中國移民的血淚以融合悲喜劇、史實與虛構的方式呈現在《中國佬》一書。書中的主人翁主要以湯氏的父親為藍圖，描寫早期鋪設美洲鐵路、或者在莊園裡受到剝削卻有苦難言的華工。湯氏成功描繪隻身在美努力工作、存錢寄回家鄉，在惡劣的工作環境下被環境侷限、思鄉念親的華工及其遭遇，生動的故事讓她再以《中國佬》一書 獲得國家書卷獎。
在夏威夷居住的歲月裡，湯氏在中學裡執教英文與數學，並且有計畫的寫作，雖然她曾經表示旅居夏威夷的時光是她「延長的假期」，這個假期中，她的努裡耕耘總算在在作品推出後，開花結果， 《女鬥士》 很快的受到多方的肯定。一九八七年，她將散文集結出版，並且開始著手進行一本以二十世紀為時代背景的小說。在《中國佬》出版後九年，她的首部小說《孫行者：?書》終於上市。故事描述一名年輕的華裔美籍青年（第五代華人）與其白人妻子西行尋求生路，湯氏雖然將小說時代背景訂定為二十世紀的現代，但由其敘述中，讀者不難見觀音以及孫悟空的傳奇、神話意象。以往湯氏的作品中的悲苦喜樂戲劇性的變化在《孫行者 》一書依舊可見，她也致力維持對女性角色地位的探討，不過此書中的男主人翁惠特曼阿辛沙文而自我中心的形象顯然並不討好讀者。湯氏在故事中融合東西方社群的生活經驗（在阿辛的名字中可見中西合璧的寓意），並且以阿辛這角色對世人作諷喻。湯氏在二○○三年出版的 《和平第五書》接續阿辛的故事，進而融入湯氏反戰、追求和平的態度以及其受到父親逝世的打擊、著作手稿被焚毀的遭遇，在《和平第五書》中明白揭示她近年來的省思。
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Maxine Hong Kingston
1940-
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Julia Hsieh 謝佩璇
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Early Life
Known as A Best-Seller Author
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Acknowledged as the "living treasure" of Hawaii , Maxine Hong Kingston has been a national notable writer since her first published work. The popularity of her works indicates how her extraordinary writing style makes her a controversial figure in terms of her writing materials and sources that further unveil the conflicting identities as a Chinese American. |
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Early Life
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A. Early Family Background |
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Named after a blonde gamester in Tom Hong's game house, Hong was the eldest child among the six children in the Hong family. As the first generation Chinese American, Hong's parents started a life with hardship as immigrants from China . Tom Hong was a scholar with cynic and critical perspectives back in his homeland; once immigrated and settled down in California , he worked as a laundry worker to support his wife, Ying Lan and their two children in China . Unfortunately, their two children died young back home, and Hong sent for his wife Ying Lan, who was trained as a physician and midwife, and brought her to States to start a new life. Ying Lan, Hong's mother, was forced to quit her practicing of medicines and began to work as a field help and laundry labour. She gave birth to Hong in her mid-forties and was a great influence on Hong as for her personalities, her stories, and her teachings to Hong. |
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B. Education and adulthood |
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As a young child of a descendant of immigrants, Hong did not really start off well. She had problems fitting in her school life in view of language barrier and family bearing. After her troubling kindergarten year, she worked her fingers to the bone in all later stages of education, and earned full scholarship to attend University of California at Berkeley . Starting as an engineering major, Hong switched to English afterward and eventually got her BA in English. During her undergraduate years, she met Earll Kingston while she was still a student. She married him right after they graduated from Berkeley, and before long, she was pregnant and moved to Hawaii with her new family with Kingston, now an actor, and Joseph her son, born in 1963. There in Hawaii , Hong taught English and Math in high school, and meanwhile, she continued to write fervently.
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Known as A Best-Seller Author |
The year 1976 Hong published her first work, The Woman Warrior that won her the year's National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. A bright star in the arena of writing, Hong's success in her first publication brought along her fames and other awards as well, she was then nationally recognized as an excellent story-teller with her fascinating stories. |
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A. Sources and materials of her writings: Styles of writing/oral tradition |
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Hong achieves sudden fame with her own spectacular aura of writing. Even though some critics berate her for blurring the genre of fiction and non-fiction with the memoir, others highly praise her fascinating stories with successful attempt to portrait the hardship and discrepancy between her dual identities in the American family of Chinese descent.
Hong's knowledge of Chinese ancient legends or folk stories is what she learned from her mother's or other elderly relatives' "Talk stories." Despite the dispute of authenticity and inaccuracy of the stories or legends she divulges in her works, Hong not just acquaints her readers with the presentation of conflict, the sparkled and consummated two cultural bearings of the protagonist and all the other characters, but elaborates more of her imagination on the portraits of characters and the happenings of these characters. |
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B. Her works |
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Hong's first work, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts , was made to the market in 1976. It describes the main protagonist's growth with her mother Brave Orchid's stories and doctrines of upbringing her at the centerstage of the plot. With this work, the readers get a clear picture of how an American Chinese child, who is regarded as "a ghost" living and being educated among many others, is born and raised under circumstances full of challenges and bewilderment. Growing up in a patriarchal society and secluded community, the protagonist manages to strive to speak up with her default and flawed voice, just like her mother strives to manage a living, which is extremely different from her past life. The female characters exert themselves in finding a balanced stance to live in a constraining society. China Man , Hong's next novel in 1980, puts the sojourner male protagonist under the spot light, with major female characters go on telling the stories. It has a plot, again a mixture of Hong's fantasy and true story, comedy and tragedy, narrating the early Chinese immigrants' poignancy as railway builders, slaves in the plantation and so on. With the male protagonist's silence, China Man conveys the sweat-blood laboring that the readers perceive in early Chinese immigrants' deprivation and how these labours connects with their origins, their family far back home and how they held onto inhumane working status under seemingly endless exploitation. This second publication of Hong's won her a National Book Award. When Hong first moved to Hawaii with her new family, she worked as a teacher. She regarded these years in Hawaii as "extended vacation" that allows her to write ebulliently; these years of writing placidly later redeem her as a world-known figure with her first two successful works. In 1987, Her collection of essays, Hawai'i One Summer was published, and then the novel that she proclaimed to be a modern one was on the way. Nine years from China Man , Hong kept her promise of a novel with the 20 th century setting. However, this first novel of hers did not gain much applause as her previous works. In Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book , Hong depicts a fifth-generation Chinese American Whittman Ah Sing in a third-person narration. With this chauvinist and egocentric protagonist's trip into the west, Hong endeavors to portray this male figure with Chinese legend and mythological figures, such as Guan-yin and Monkey King, as the base/root underneath. The setting, woven with mythical figures and Hong's own experience in her community, is a fusion of the east and the west; and the reader can somehow be aware of that simply from Ah Sing's English name "Whitman," named after the American poet, Walt Whitman. Hong's most current work is The Fifth Book of Peace published in 2003, which was an inspiration as well as a medication from the loss of her father and a fire taken place back when her fiction just took form.
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Reference
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Feng, Pin-chia. "Maxine Hong Kingston." Dictionary of Literary Biography . Vol. 173: American Novelists Since World War II, Fifth Series. Ed. James R. Giles, and Wanda H. Giles. Gale Research, 1996. 84-97.
Huntley, E.D. Maxine Hong Kinston: A Critical Companion . Westport , CT : Greenwood Press, 2001.
"Maxine (Ting Ting) Hong Kingston." Contemporary Authors Online . Thomson Gale, 2004.
"Maxine Hong Kingston." Literature Resource Center .
Medoff, Jeslyn. "Maxine Hong Kingston." Modern American Women Writers . The Scribner Writers Series. Charles Scribner's Sons: 1991. 251-259.
Simmons, Diane. Maxine Hong Kingston . New York : Twayne, 1999. |
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