Word: stockton
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...attempt to understand others by inhabiting them. The others are men, China Men, heirs to an ancient tradition of oppressing women. A scene early in the book sets Kingston off on her imaginative quest. As a young girl, the author watches her father at work in his laundry in Stockton, Calif. Trained as a scholar in China, he is subject to black moods and bitterness over his low estate. His angriest curses vilify women's bodies. The girl both understands and is bewildered. She addresses him in memory: "We knew that it was to feed...
...those very spikes with the big heads and pounded them until the heads spread like that, mere nails to him. He had built the railroad so that trains would thunder over us, on a street that inclined toward us. We lived on a special spot of the earth, Stockton, the only city on the Pacific coast with three railroads...
When Emma Jane Stockton was a little girl, she looked forward eagerly to spending Christmas holidays with her grandparents in Trenton, N.J. They lived in a mansion called Ivy Tower that was on a charming street in New Jersey's bustling capital. She remembered the gracious way of life, and although E.J., as her friends called her, lived with her parents in nearby Yardley, Pa., she always considered Trenton her home...
Then the city, already infected with urban blight, began to deteriorate. Industries disappeared, buildings were abandoned, people moved out. The Stockton mansion was torn down, and replaced by a gas station. E.J. herself moved on to college, to New York, to Europe...
Money had never been a problem; her wealthy family was one of New Jersey's most distinguished, and an ancestor, Richard Stockton, had signed the Declaration of Independence. Free to do what she pleased, the heavyset, attractive blond worked as executive secretary of the Greater Trenton Symphony Orchestra, served as vice president of the Friends of the New Jersey State Museum, and sat on the board of the Salvation Army. Her restoration work almost completed, E.J., 37, finally moved into her Mercer Street home last September. She told friends: "I want to see Trenton regain its dignity...