"I want to be always happy," Maxine Hong Kingston announces. But, as this interview makes clear, for me, … - Shirley Geok-lin Lim

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In conditions of private property. . . "life-activity" stands in the service of property instead of property standing the service of free life-activity.

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

"I want to be always happy," Maxine Hong Kingston announces. But, as this interview makes clear, for me, it was the desire to write poetry that kept me discontented, if not depressed and unhappy, through what many casual biographers have characterized as successful and productive decades.

Announces, Casual, Hong, Successful, Unhappy, Writing

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That desire to reach further is also where I ended my memoir, in 1994 in California, perhaps ironically, looking out to the Pacific and back to Asia, toward the not-yet-written.

Asia, California, Desire, Looking, Perhaps

Sometimes, in my published complaints about not being a writer, I have recalled the prospect - the yearning to be a writer - as it first formed for me.

Firsts, Prospect, Published, Recalled, Sometimes, Yearning

These commonplace categories - wife, mother, housewife, teacher - are in fact teleological referents. They gesture to profound states of being that animate, absorb and saturate the subject, like indelible dyes spilled repeatedly over a plain fabric. No matter if the fabric is sturdy or delicate, translucent or opaque, those dyes will stain. They will color the days and years and life.

Color, Mother, Saturate, Teacher, Teleological

When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a writer. "

Able, Ask Me, Asks, Say, Writer

Even my novels offer passages in which the major character is imagined as a writer. In Joss and Gold, Li An is a business writer who edits her company's weekly public relations magazine. And in Sister Swing, Suyin writes human interest stories for a free, local community paper, The Asian Time.

Character, Gold, Local, Swings, Weekly, Writing