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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.04951
EAN num: 9780679723288
ISBN number: 0679723285
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: April 23, 1989
Publishing house: Vintage
Age index: Young Adult
Release Date: April 23, 1989
Sale Popularity Level: 45335
Studio: Vintage
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Product Description:
The author chronicles the lives of three generations of Chinese men in America, woven from memory, myth and fact. Here's a storyteller's tale of what they endured in a strange new land.
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Rated by buyers 
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China Men, written as a male companion piece to her female-centered The Woman Warrior, focuses on the Chinese men of Maxine Hong Kingston's family. This book takes what critics said about Kingston being a man-hating nut in The Woman Warrior and sublimates it; now she can simply be accused of being a white-hating nut.
The immigration process was very tough for the men in Kingston's family. Because they were foreigners that spoke little to no English, they were forced into low-paying, labor-intensive field work. The Chinese immigrants would often be called "chinamen." What Kingston has very subtly done with the word is turned it into a positive. The title of the book is "China Men," not "Chinamen." When whites in the book use the word, it's derogatory; Kingston uses it differently - with respect. With what her relatives have been through, it's easy to understand why Kingston tends to hate white Californians.
China Men is heavily mixed with amazing fantasy and heart-breaking reality. Kingston has grown as a writer since The Woman Warrior and anyone interested in a fascinating read on Chinese immigration should pick this one up.
Rated by buyers -
I loved this book, and I love how the author writes. She tells her stories not in a typical narrative, factual, journalistic way, but in a stylized, "storylike" way (does that make sense?!). All of the stories focused on the different men in her family, especially her father. They all center on the Chinese man's experience in America, from the railroad days onward, and tells of their struggles, triumphs and failures. As a whole the book is about how these experiences shaped the men in her family. She intersperses a few legends here and there, just like she does in Woman Warrior. I enjoy how she takes her family history and literally turns it into a work of art. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
Rated by buyers -
In China Men, Kingston took me on a ride all over the literary landscape. In general, I thought her book was an interesting tossed salad of memoir, fable, reporting, and poetry. As a reader, it reminded me of a scrapbook of family stories, newspaper articles, heritage legends -- all assembled in one place.
Interestingly, Kingston begins the book with two distinctive chapters. Unlike the rest of the book, these two chapters are relatively homogenous, sticking with one form, voice, structure and tone throughout. The very first chapter is the fable of the Land of Women. I didn?t understand this chapter until the last sentences, when it seemed as though Kingston was saying that coming to North America emasculated the Chinese men who made the journey to the Gold Mountain.
If Kingston?s main theme is that the journey to North America emasculated the Chinese Men, then from a reader?s perspective I?m not sure if the book delivers on this promise. To put a fable with a very obvious moral at the beginning of the book seems to me to set up a contract with the reader about the subject or theme of the book. Although, Kingston explores many different aspects of the Chinese experience in North America, and even starts to explore the ways that China Men were oppressed, I?m not sure she completely proves her case in my mind. I could be wrong, however.
Interestingly, the second chapter of the book is another short one, this time a nearly pure piece of memoir. Alone, this chapter seems to set up the author?s own relationship with Chinese men. By mistaking another man for her father, she seems to be saying from the beginning of the book that from her perspective Chinese men are nearly interchangeable. But interestingly, she isn?t the only one who makes the mistake. All the children in that scene mistake the strange man for their father. I like this chapter placed here because it contrasts nicely with the fable/story in the very first chapter. The very first chapter is told at a distance by a storyteller/narrator. The second chapter is told very first person from our main narrator?s voice.
Kingston returns to this theme several more times in the book. On page 217, she remarks that one of her Uncles looks just like her father. Interestingly, Uncle Bun is also completely forgotten, erased from her sister?s memory only a few years after he leaves. Kingston often hints at how distant and interchangeable the China Men were to her and to the women of her family. At other times she explores her narrator?s perceptions that China Men have no heart, no emotions.
One of Kingston?s greatest strengths, in my opinion, is her ability to weave in all sorts of other stories into the narrative of her story -- presenting a mosaic of memoirs, possibilities, facts, essays, fables, legends, ghost stories, scenes and reporting -- that all add up to a complete picture of the lives of the China Men who came to the United States. On page 49, she starts one version of a trip to the US with, ?I think this is the journey you don?t tell me:? She then recounts the tale of the father?s arrival in the US as a stowaway. But like The French Lieutenant?s Woman, she (Kingston) also gives us another, more ordinary version of the father?s emigration. I don?t know which one is ?real? and which one is imagined and, frankly, I don?t care. The fact that some Chinese used each of these methods is credible enough to keep my disbelief suspended and keep me in the story.
Rated by buyers -
The China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston was a very interesting book. It contains stories of Chinese men traveling to America in the 1800's and working on the transcontinental railroads, in Sierra Nevada. The author shares a lot of details in the stories about her family traveling to America. She retold the story from a male's perspective of what hardships they've been through to get to America, in search for the Golden Mountains. A rich country that they about which is full of riches. As they reach to America what they thought was the Golden Mountains was just a land of hard labor and low paying jobs. Some of them regretted coming to America, but they couldn't go back to their country because they had no money.
Some part of the story made me feel like I could relate my family to the characters that Kingston has written about. My family immigrated to the United States in 1984. Like the characters in Kingston's book they heard about the Golden Mountains that's why they came to America. All they found was low paying jobs which are similar to the characters in Kingston's book. Is this really what they thought of as the Golden Mountains? It was for sure not what they had thought of. Like many Chinese family my parents thought that the Golden Mountain was really a place to find gold, but all they found was their own blood, sweat, and tears that they shed of all the hard work that they did.
This book is also very educating because in one of the chapters, Kingston listed a list of laws that were set against Chinese in the 1800's. It gives the reader more information of what the Chinese immigrants had went through to come to America and to work for the country. Overall, this book is very good and very detailed. I strongly recommended this book, if you're interested in learning more about the experiences of Chinese men traveling to America and their stories. This is also one of the best book that I've read.
Rated by buyers -
This is an amazing book, wrought with heartwrenching love and pain over the wiping out of Chinese Americans in American history. I disagree with people who say it can be confusing for a non-Chinese reader, because it is certainly accessible. The plot is made up of several stories from different eras of history, along with beautifully narrated myths that are symbolic of America's inhospitability. It made me reacess my understanding of an America that is not covered in textbooks and really to see how it feels to not feel at home in one's own country.
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