But What about the First Four Books of Peace??

The first book I checked out for my Berkeley project was "The Fifth Book of Peace" by Maxine Hong Kingston. I knew I couldn't focus on EVERYTHING about Berkeley (it's a whole row of books at my library), so I thought it would be interesting to write a story inspired by the Oakland Fires of 1991. I remember my Kindergarten teacher reading a book about it to us and crying. Some of her friends had lost their houses in the fire. Maxine Hong Kingston, Berkeley professor and well known Asian American writer, lived in Oakland in 1991 and lost everything... including the 156 pages of her unfinished manuscript. My parents, brother and baby me had just moved to Kentfield, where we still live now, at that point, but my mom has a former roommate and coworker whose house burned down.

What I didn't know about "The Fifth Book of Peace" is that only the first 40 pages, in a section appropriately titled "Fire," is actually about the Oakland fire.
The second section recreates the 156 pages of the book she lost, which is about a bohemian artist couple named Tana and Wittman and their son, Mario, who move to a poor area of Hawaii during the Vietnam war. While this part included some insights from the perspective of a Berkeley writer about peace, especially because Berkeley was so famous for its activism against the war. This section is less about plot however, than the Hawaiian ohana (oh hi, Lilo and Stitch), peace marches to Sanctuary, and smoking joints. Seriously. Somewhere in there is some sort of deep allegory about the nature of peace - in the first section Kingston talks about three books of peace, myths from ancient Chinese history - but I thought that much of Wittman's and Tana's ideals were overly idealistic, and when, in the third section, Kingston reveals that the story of Wittman, Tana, and Mario (who later starts calling himself Ehukai and speaking in Pidgin; his parents go with it)might just be a slightly fictionalized account of the twenty years she spent living in Hawaii with her husband and young son. By the third section, Kingston goes back to autobiography mode, leading writing workshops for war veterans and talking about peace as if she is an expert. I don't know if I just didn't understand this book, but it seems a little lofty to me of Kingston to assert that just because she was an activist and "has known destruction" she has written a Book of Peace.
Maxine Hong Kingston is a little kooky.

However, it did inspire me to write my fire story - about a woman and her daughter who also lived through the fire, and her daughter's over-dramatized memories of it. I haven't gotten a chance to interview my mom's friends yet, but I'm sure it will allow me to add more details and information to my story.