Love a Broad Margin to My Life, by Maxine Hong Kingston. 2012. Vintage paperback, 240 pp.

In her singular voice—both humble and brave, touching and humorous—Maxine Hong Kingston gives us a poignant and beautiful memoir-in-verse that captures the wisdom that comes with age. As she reflects on her sixty-five years, she circles from present to past and back, from lunch with a writer friend to the funeral of a Vietnam veteran, from her long marriage to her arrest at a peace march in Washington. On her journeys as writer, peace activist, teacher, and mother, she revisits her most beloved characters—Wittman Ah-Sing, the Tripmaster Monkey, and Fa Mook Lan, the Woman Warrior—and presents us with a beautiful meditation on China then and now. The result is a marvelous account of an American life of great purpose and joy, and the tonic wisdom of a writer we have come to cherish. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR.

Author Maxine Hong Kingston was just awarded the Emerson-Thoreau Medal by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Congratulations, Maxine!

She tells us: I entitled my book with Thoreau's words: "I Love a Broad Margin to My Life." He guides my life and my travels.