I discuss the implications of Maxine Hong Kingston's references to Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” and Walt Whitman’s poetry, including Leaves of Grass, in her novel Tripmaster Monkey. Published in 1989 and set in the 1960s, Tripmaster Monkey reflects a historical moment in which an ascendant ethnic studies coalition was bound together by calls to diversify college curricula and challenge the established Western canon while protesting the Vietnam War. Kingston allegorizes the central preoccupations of this activist movement—as well as its internal contradictions—by staging a dueling dynamic between the model of resistance offered by Melville’s Bartleby and the vision of reconciliation advanced by Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Early on in the novel, Kingston’s protagonist Wittman Ah Sing is stylized as Bartleby’s descendent: both figures reject capitalism by refusing to become productive workers. Bartleby’s insistence on willful non-participation finds a parallel in Ah Sing’s radical refusal to be an employee for the corporations that profit from both the weaponry produced for the Vietnam War and the mass consumer goods sold to average Americans. As the novel progresses, Ah Sing pivots away from Bartleby and follows Whitman’s example by positioning himself as a playwright of the people. Ah Sing’s metaphorical resemblance to Whitman reflects his desire to embody a conciliatory consciousness that accommodates a vision of American democracy governed by a rainbow coalition of the likeminded. Making art is framed as the only kind of labor worth pursuing. Kingston partially resolves the tension between Melville and Whitman by suggesting that both writers offer Ah Sing methods of evasion in a capitalist economy and affirm his commitment to pacifism.