Kingston has contributed to the feminist movement with such works as her memoir The Woman Warrior, which discusses gender and ethnicity and how these concepts affect the lives of women.

In China, Tom Hong worked as a professional scholar and teacher in his home village of Sun Woi, near Canton.

[10] Furthermore, early-twentieth-century U.S. employment laws were rife with racism, leaving little interest in hiring a well-educated Chinese immigrant.

Shortly thereafter, Kingston was born; she was named "Maxine" after a blonde patron at the gambling house who was always remarkably lucky.

Fascinated by war and soldiers, she grew up hearing her mother recount China's history as a continuous cycle of conquest and conflict: “We were always losers.

We were always on the run.”[10] At a young age, Kingston was drawn to writing and won a five-dollar prize from Girl Scout Magazine for an essay she wrote titled "I Am an American."

[1] After relocating to Hawaii, her boredom in a lonely hotel 80 miles north of Oahu caused Maxine to begin writing extensively, finally completing and publishing her first book, The Woman Warrior: Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, in 1976.

[5] She has written one novel, Tripmaster Monkey, a story depicting a protagonist based on the mythical Chinese character Sun Wu Kong.

A public television documentary produced by Joan Saffa, Stephen Talbot and Gayle K. Yamada, Maxine Hong Kingston: Talking Story, was released in 1990.

Wong and featuring notable Asian-American authors such as Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang, it explored Kingston's life, paying particular attention to her commentary on cultural heritage and both sexual and racial oppression.

[13] Kingston also participated in the production of Bill Moyers' PBS historical documentary, Becoming American: The Chinese Experience.

Kingston's anti-war stance has significantly trickled into her work; she has stated that writing The Fifth Book of Peace was initiated and inspired by growing up during World War II.

In July, 2014, Kingston was awarded the 2013 National Medal of Arts by President of the United States Barack Obama.

[14] In Spring 2023, Kingston was awarded the Emerson-Thoreau Medal for distinguished achievement in the field of literature by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences[15] She currently resides in Oakland, California where she is retired and maintains her garden.

'[17]Kingston named the main character of Tripmaster Monkey (1989) Wittman Ah Sing, after Walt Whitman.

[6] Chin has accused Kingston of "liberally adapting [traditional stories] to collude with white racist stereotypes and to invent a 'fake' Chinese-American culture that is more palatable to the mainstream.

Shirley Geok-lin Lim, a professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, stated that Kingston's "representations of patriarchal, abusive Chinese history were playing to a desire to look at Asians as an inferior spectacle".