The natural world need not be broken up by national boundaries, critically acclaimed author Maxine Hong Kingston told a full house in Science Center C yesterday evening.

In an unstructured speech that included several readings from her books, the popular Asian-American writer discussed the importance of "crossing of borders and boundaries" between people of different groups and ethnicities.

"In each of us," she said, "all the old cultures live."

Kingston also explored the question of what constitutes a "home" for the individual.

"You want to make your home, and here comes some group who draws a boundary...and all of a sudden you're on the other side of the line.... What is 'home'? Does it just have to be an idea?"

To further illustrate her points, Kingston read passages from her books, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Chinaman and Tripmaster Monkey.

She concluded by reading an excerpt from the preface to her current project, a collection of essays reflecting on her former residence in Hawaii.

After her speech, Kingston took questions from the audience on her work, childhood and outlook on life.

Appropriate to her speech's theme of crossing borders, Kingston said that her writing is "on the border between fiction and non-fiction."

"I'm trying to write the story of some real people, but in order to do that, I have to use fictional techniques," she said.

Kingston expressed great hopes for people of different backgrounds to live in harmony and claimed to be "much more optimistic and happy" than when she was younger.

"I say to myself it's my ethical responsibility to be happy," she said. "Happiness is strength.... If I'm not joyful, I might as well be dead."

Kingston also spoke enthusiastically of the power of the English language as the best medium for communicating her thoughts in writing.

"English is such a plastic language," she said. "I feel like I can write the rhythms of any language in English."

While the audience that packed the aisles of Science Center C was largely Asian and Asian-American, other races were also fairly well-represented.

Kingston's appearance was sponsored by the Committee on Degrees in Women's Studies and the Department of English and American Literature and Language.