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SPREE INSIDER
Feed your soul at two enlightening December events
By Julia Burke
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Maxine Hong Kingston photo by Gail K. Evanari.
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In December, two back-to-back Spree-sponsored events are designed to inspire and entertain. For the last three years, Buffalo Spree has been a media sponsor of Just Buffalo’s Babel, the literary series that brings world-renowned authors to read and discuss their works. On December 1 at Kleinhans Music Hall, Babel presents author Maxine Hong Kingston. Kingston, perhaps best known for her classic 1976 memoir The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, is one of the nation’s most prominent writers on feminism and the Chinese immigrant experience in America.
The Woman Warrior, written while Kingston was teaching creative writing at a private school in Hawaii, received widespread critical acclaim including the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is a dream-like, mythic, and haunting story of the immigrant experience in America, inspired by Kingston’s upbringing in 1950’s Stockton, California, as the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Beautifully weaving Chinese culture, language, and folklore with the voice of a young American student coming of age during the Vietnam era, the memoir remains required reading at many schools and a staple of Asian-American Studies curricula.
Kingston’s subsequent works continued to explore the immigrant theme. Her 1980 follow-up China Men examined the experiences of the men in her family and in the Chinese-American community, and was awarded the 1981 National Book Award. Her most recent novel is Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, released in 2006. Veterans was awarded the 2007 Northern California Special Award in Publishing. A passionate activist for peace, Kingston was arrested in 2003 for crossing a police line during an Iraq War protest in Washington, D.C.
Kingston’s appearance will include remarks on The Woman Warrior and a reading from the book, followed by an interview and question-and-answer period with the audience. Tickets are still available at www.justbuffalo.org.
In other Spree event news, we hope that all the articles about Buffalo historic and newly built architectural marvels in this issue get you thinking about our architectural heritage—past, present, and future. Learn more and share your own thoughts at a panel sponsored by Spree and the Burchfield-Penney Art Center entitled “What We Saved, What We Lost, What We’re Building:The Changing Face of Buffalo Architecture.” Many of the writers and architects featured in these pages will be present; it’s bound to be a provocative discussion. And it’s free. It’s Thursday, December 2, at 6:30 p.m. at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.
Julia Burke is a writer living in the Elmwood Village.
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