A poignant and beautiful memoir-in-verse that captures the wisdom that comes with age from the award-winning author of The Woman Warrior and China Men.

"[A] graceful meditation. . . . Achieves meaningful insights into the art of living." --Boston Globe

"A gentle, meandering memoir, organized as a long poem. . . . Cinematic and sensual." --San Francisco Chronicle

As Maxine Hong Kingston reflects on 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.