A writer and educator, Hong Kingston creates work rooted in her experience as a first-generation Chinese American. In 1976 she published her first and most famous book, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, which combines myth, family history, Chinese folktales, and memories of growing up within two conflicting cultures. She has taught at the University of California, Berkeley since 1990, and in 2023 received the Emerson-Thoreau Medal for lifetime literary achievement.