The Steer

Novelist Maxine Hong Kingston

Episode Summary

Maxine Hong Kingston, winner of the National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal, reveals a life without music, having no feeling for the sounds that mysteriously thrilled everyone around her, devoting her ear instead to seeking out the rhythms of literature, penning nine books including The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. It wasn’t until her son Joe developed as a musician that she began to revisit the many songs she had walked past but never touched. She and her husband Earll Kingston join Sunny in the studio.

Episode Notes

Maxine Hong Kingston, winner of the National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal, reveals a life without music, having no feeling for the sounds that mysteriously thrilled everyone around her, devoting her ear instead to seeking out the rhythms of literature, penning nine books including The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts*. It wasn’t until her son Joe developed as a musician that she began to revisit the many songs she had walked past but never touched. She and her husband Earll Kingston join Sunny in the studio.