Learn from the Stories
Having two considerably different cultures can cause a strife with one’s identity. In “No Name Woman,” Maxine Kingston’s mother tells her a story of her aunt that committed adultery which therefore led to her segregation from her own family and villagers. Kingston’s mother asserts that the story should not be told by anyone and the story’s purpose was to strike fear in her daughter. Then, Kingston explores the different scenarios that could have led to her aunt’s suppressed suicide. Through the use of characterization of her aunt’s desolation, animated imagery and diction, Kingston demonstrates the difficulty of finding an identity when different cultures conflict with each other.
Kingston attempting to relate to her Chinese or American culture becomes an arduous task as she explores her aunt’s characteristics of remoteness. In “No Name Woman,” Kingston claims, “...[Her] aunt used a secret voice, a separate attentiveness”(453). Her claim reflects this characterization of her aunt’s solitude because she was very private about the man who got her pregnant. Kingston’s characterization of her aunt creates a predicament in identifying with her cultures because she explains how Chinese people were very vocal and loud, but her aunt’s quietness does not reflect that same loudness of the Chinese people. Kingston also describes her aunt as “...one of the stars, a bright dot in blackness, without home, without a companion, in eternal cold and silence”(455). Stars in the sky are typically perceived as something outstanding or bright, but Kingston meant that her aunt was as isolated as a star in the galaxy. Although the aunt was well-known among the villagers, she was acknowledged for the wrong reasons and was shamed b...
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...xile from their family. A causeless, pietistic martyrdom that extinguished the lives of two souls. There is a whiff of shame towards her family, their close-minded thoughtlessness in handling a delicate situation. This dawns’ reasoning to the fantastical, fictional accounts of her aunt’s demise. Kingston’s embellishment of an unknown half-truth gives reasoning to the underlined symbolism of her story. Raised by traditionalists, despite the advancing times, will still not speak of the true occurrences of the aunt who was “never born.” According to Kingston, to this day, she remains unaware regarding the details of her aunt, only sentiment and speculation.
Works Cited
Kingston, Maxine Hong. "No Name Women." Donald McQuade, and Robert Atwan. The Writer's Presence: A Pool of Readings. 7th edition. Bedford/St. Martins: Boston and New York, 2012. 458-470. Print
An Asian-American writer growing up in a tight and traditional Chinese community in California, Kingston is placed by her background and time period to be at the unique nexus of an aged, stale social institution and a youthful, boisterous one. She has had to face life as an alien to the culture of the land she grew up in, as well as a last witness of some scattered and unspeakably tragic old ideals. She saw the sufferings and has suffered herself; but instead of living life demurely in the dark corner of the family room like she was expected to, Kingston became the first woman warrior to voice the plight of the mute females in both Chinese and American societies. The seemingly immeasurable and indeed unconquerable gap between the two fundamentally divided cultures comes together in herself and her largely autobiographical work The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts.
Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print.
The “prodigal” aunt in Maxine Hong Kingston’s essay No Name Woman, was shunned from her family and ultimately ended up taking her life and her bastard child’s, as a result of public shaming. Instead of being heralded as a heroine and champion of women’s rights, the aunt’s legacy is one of shame and embarrassment that has been passed down through generations. While this story’s roots are Chinese, the issue at hand is multi-cultural. Women suffer from gender inequality worldwide.
Kingston’s mother told her this story as a warning; to avoid being a disgraceful and disloyal woman like her aunt. Kingston, however, does not view her aunt as a promiscuous woman, but rather a victim or a martyr. “Imagining her free with sex doesn’t fit”, she claimed. Kingston imagines her aunt as a woman who abandoned the traditions set forth by China’s extremely patriarchal society. She saw her and someone who did what so many Chinese women shou...
Maxine Kingston’s short story No Name Woman depicts several examples where pride is a crucial theme to understanding the emotions expressed by the speaker. Firstly, the speaker is addressed as a young Chinese American girl whom listens to a story, told by her mother, about her extravagant aunt, whom drowned herself and her newborn baby in the family well. The story screams out the theme of pride in the opening paragraph, with the speaker’s mother stating “You must not tell anyone… We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born” (Kingston, 1). The theme is apparent here because the quote carries a negative connotation as to the follow-up story that the mother is about to describe. The mother wants to ensure that the story will not be repeated because the entire family’s pride would be in jeopardy.
Maxine, being of the first generation of her family to be born in America, only knows about China from what she hears in her mother’s “talk-stories.” These stories are told to act as lessons on how the Chinese people were and should be, and are often vary critical. In “No Name Woman,” the tale of Maxine’s aunt who was shunned from her family for having an affair shows how careful young women must be when growing up in Chinese culture. “My aunt haunts me—her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devoted pages to her…” (17). Maxine feels remorse and can relate to her aunt because she too feels a sense of alienation from her traditional Chinese and seemingly narrow-minded heritage.
As a writer, and author of the essay "No Name Woman", Maxine Hong Kingston finds herself continuing to struggle with her sense of identity. She feels a sense of betrayal to her family, torn between her loyalty to them, and her desire to write about her aunt. She feels that as she writes about her, revealing her story, her aunt is "haunting" her even today. She writes" The Chinese are always frightened of the drowned one, whose weeping ghost, wet hair hanging and skin bloated, waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute."
The patriarchal repression of Chinese women is illustrated by Kingston's story of No Name Woman, whose adulterous pregnancy is punished when the villagers raid the family home. Cast out by her humiliated family, she births the baby and then drowns herself and her child. Her family exile her from memory by acting as if "she had never been born" (3) -- indeed, when the narrator's mother tells the story, she prefaces it with a strict injunction to secrecy so as not to upset the narrator's father, who "denies her" (3). By denying No Name Woman a name and place in history, leaving her "forever hungry," (16) the patriarchy exerts the ultimate repression in its attempt to banish the transgressor from history. Yet her ghost continues to exist in a liminal space, remaining on the fringes of memory as a cautionary tale passed down by women, but is denied full existence by the men who "do not want to hear her name" (15).
Kingston, Maxine Hong. "No Name Woman." 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. 4th Edition. Ed. Samuel Cohen. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 227-39. Print.
Kingston’s mother takes many different approaches to reach out to her daughter and explain how important it is to remain abstinent. First, she tells the story of the “No Name Woman”, who is Maxine’s forgotten aunt, “’ Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her can happen to you. Don’t humiliate us. You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born”’ (5), said Maxine’s mother. Kingston’s aunt was murdered for being involved in this situation. The shame of what Kingston’s aunt brought to the family led them to forget about her. This particular talk-story is a cautionary tale to deter Kingston from having premarital sex and to instill in her fear of death and humiliation if she violates the lesson her mother explained to her. Kingston is able to get pregnant but with the lecture her mother advises her with keeps her obedient. Brave Orchid tells her this story to open her eyes to the ways of Chinese culture. The entire family is affected by one’s actions. She says, “‘Don’t humiliate us’” (5) because the whole village knew about the pregnant aunt and ravaged the family’s land and home because of it. Maxine tries asking her mother in-depth questions about this situation, but her m...
In Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, the protagonist, Gogol, struggles with his cultural identity. He is an American-born Bengali struggling to define himself. He wants to fit into the typical American-lifestyle, a lifestyle his parents do not understand. This causes him tension through his adolescence and adult life, he has trouble finding a balance between America and Bengali culture. This is exemplified with his romantic relationships. These relationships directly reflect where he is in his life, what he is going through and his relationship with his parents. Each woman indicates a particular moment in time where he is trying to figure out his cultural identity. Ruth represents an initial break away from Bengali culture; Maxine represents
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Cultures can shape the identities of individuals. Kingston identity was shape by Chinese and Chinese American culture. "No Name Woman," begins with a talk-story, about Kingston’ aunt she never knew. The aunt had brought disgrace upon her family by having an illegitimate child. In paragraph three, “she could not have been pregnant, you see, because her husband had been gone for years” (621). This shows that Kingston’s aunt had an affair with someone and the result was her pregnancy. She ended up killing herself and her baby by jumping into the family well in China. After hearing the story, Kingston is not allowed to mention her aunt again. The ideas of gender role-play an important role in both cultures. Kingston in her story “No Name Woman” describes some of the gender roles and expectations both women and men had to abide. Some of the gender roles in Kingston story have a semblance with the contemporary American culture.
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