Maxine Hong Kingston brings her richly astonishing perception to the San Francisco of the sixties and its life of youth and art. Her hero is Wittman Ah Sing, a young Chinese American one year out of Berkeley, six feet tall, skinny, hip, an unstoppable, word-drunk playwright, poet and talker. Wittman is (naturally, given the time and place) a rebel. But, like Monkey - the blessed saint-troublemaker of Chinese legend who helped bring the Buddhist scriptures from India, and to whom our hero bears more than a passing resemblance - Wittman is a rebel with a cause.

Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book

Kingston, Maxine Hong

Alfred A. Knopf

1989

2010.058.017