Maxine Hong Kingston
To Visit Oct. 3;
Student Author Jimmy Castellanos '09 To Join

National Book Award-winning author Maxine Hong Kingston will visit the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Tuesday, Oct. 3 for a reading from the anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (Koa Books, September 2006), a collection of 80 essays edited by King and recounted by veterans and others who've faced cultural and political conflict, from World War II to the present. The public portion of the program begins at 6:45 p.m.; seating is on a first-come basis.
For more than 12 years, Kingston has led writing and meditation workshops for war veterans and their families. The contributors to this new volumecombat veterans, medics, and others who served in war; gang members, drug users, and victims of domestic violence; draft resisters, deserters, and peace activistsare part of this community of writers working together to heal the trauma of war through art.
The evening program also will include remarks from contributing writer Jimmy Castellanos '09 who was invited by Kingston to attend one of her writing workshops this summer in the Bay Area. At the time of the workshop, Castellanosa biology-chemistry major at CMC and an aviation weapons specialist technician in the United States Marine Corpssays he was unaware that King was editing the anthology.
Castellanos was deployed in 2004 to Al Asad, Iraq, about 90 miles northwest of Baghdad, on a seven-month combat tour in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His narrative, Voluntary Disarmament in Iraq, tells his story about war, ethics, and his personal transformation, which subsequently prompted a two-year conscientious objector investigation by the United States Marine Corps.
"I really felt it was important to write about how I've changed and how the military responded when I came forward as a conscientious objector," says Castellanos, who kept a journal while serving in Iraq. He describes his time in the Middle East as fraught with tension once senior enlists learned of his emerging opposition to war.
During the workshop with Kingston, Castellanos was encouraged to read his writings to the rest of the group. "One woman teared up," he recalls.
"Jimmy Castellanos ranks among the most courageous Claremont McKenna College students I have known during my forty years on the faculty," says John Roth, the Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy and director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights. "After enlisting in the Marines and while serving in the current Iraq war, his experiences and his deeply probed convictions led him to seek conscientious objector status, which he has pursued through the official channels of his military branch. Under considerable duress, he remains faithful to his conscience. His actions are significant not only for him but also for our country and its armed forces in particular, for they raise important questions about the responses that should be made to them."
Castellanos says he hopes to publish his own book by the time he graduates.
Kingston's books include The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976), China Men (1982), Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989), and The Fifth Book of Peace (2003). Her writings have won critical praise and national awards including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the PEN West Award for Fiction, and the American Book Award. In 1997, President Bill Clinton presented her with a National Humanities Medal and she has been named a "Living Treasure of Hawaii."