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Analysis of no name woman
Maxine Hong Kingston's "No Name Woman" Analysis
Analysis of no name woman
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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
For Kingston, The Woman Warrior signifies more than five chapters of talk-stories synthesized together. Within each chapter of the memoirs, Kingston engraves the method in which she undertook to discover her discrete voice. The culture clash between her mother and Kingston accumulated her struggles and insecurities, resulting in Kingston’s climax during her tirade. However, what Kingston accentuates the most is that the a breakthrough from silence requires one to reject a society’s
The story tells that the girl did not speak for three years in school. During the three years, she covered her school art paintings with black paint. She painted black over houses and flowers and suns and she made a layer of chalk on top when she drew on the blackboard. This black paint shows the symbolism of wanting to cover up and hide herself from the challenges of her new life. The artwork represented her inner self and the black the covering she felt was necessary in her current world. Note that the blindness and the darkness were like the artwork she drew (her true self) and painted over each with black paint. She imagined pulling the curtain or opening the door to what was beneath. Kingston described fear feeling and strong emotions through the painting. It was deep, dark and helpfulness. To the Americans at school who only saw the black, she was being stubborn, depressed, psychotic maybe, or developmentally challenged. Moreover, in the American school, she did not know that she was supposed to talk. When she realised that she had to talk in school to pass kindergarten she became more miserable. Reading out loud was easier because she didn’t have to make up the words. Simple words like “I” were hard because in Chinese “I” had seven strokes but only 3 strokes in English. It was a hard concept to understand. She was punished for not saying them right which added to her insecurities. The girl liked the Negro students because they treated her well and thought she spoke well. They protected her from mean Japanese kids who hit her and chased her and called her
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. New York: Random House, 1975. Vintage International Edition, April 1989.
Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. Women's voices, feminist visions: classic and contemporary readings. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 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.
Yuval-Davis. Who's Afraid of Feminism? Ed. Ann Oakley and Juliet Mitchell. New York: The New Press, 1997.
Different environment makes people gradually different way of thinking and values, the roles have their own experience of background influence in the formation of their personality. Maggie and Dee has an opposite trait to generate their mother’s attitude toward different way. Alice has cleverly written by black people of generation complex attitude on the ideas and cultural heritage in Everyday Use. Mother-daughter relationship also is complicated in those two articles. In No Name Woman, the mother tells the daughter a story about her aunt and do not allow tell anyone else. The mother is traditional person and she hopes the daughter go with her. Both two articles shows conflict between traditional and new, mother and daughter’s relationship.
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.
Tayo’s aunt (Auntie) is the personification of the Pueblo culture’s staunch opposition to change. She is bound to her life and the people around her; more so because of the various “disgraces” brought upon her family by her nephew Tayo being a “half-breed”, her brother Josiah’s love af...
Kingston’s “No Name Woman” is a story that revolves around morals, society and family expectations, and women role in society. Kingston writes the story of her aunt that committed suicide in China and she has never heard of until her mother spoke of her once. The purpose of Kingston story is to show women role in China and how women were trap in their society.
Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print.
Kingston's narrator tackles this repression when she sympathetically frames No Name Woman's story as one of subjugation, pointing out that "women in the old Ch...
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...
Margaret Atwood’s story Lusus Naturae documents what it is like to be seen as a monster by both your own family and your larger community. Despite the fact that she is person with thoughts and feelings, the Narrator’s family shuns and neglects her where as the rest of the village forms a mob and kills her. The reason as to why this happens is because both the Narrator’s family and village are afraid of what they do not know and are ignorant to the fact that she is a person.
Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. New York: St. Martin's, 2002. 65-71 Truth, Sojourner?Ain?t I a Woman? The Presence of Others, 3rd ed. Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz.