No name woman

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Recommended: Impact of culture on identity

The choices that we make everyday greatly define the type of person we are. Everyone has their own opportunity costs, but what is someone willing to give up to achieve more of something else? This is exactly what Maxine Kingston does in her essay “No Name Woman.” She openly defies her traditional Chinese culture in order to write about her aunt, which would normally be extremely taboo in her family. She wishes to achieve a greater understanding of her aunt and the struggles she had to face being a defamation to her entire family. The opportunity cost Kingston faces with this is going against her family’s word and betraying their rule. Furthermore, Kingston uses a plethora of language and diction to convey her tone and show to us how she felt towards her aunt. From paragraphs 24 and 25 Kingston uses vivid imagery to really allow us to picture her aunt and how much care she put into herself. Since Kingston put so much detail into her aunt’s description, we can see she actually admires her aunt’s beauty and is apathetic to the suffering she went through. To continue, there are other sections where Kingston actually feels sorry for her aunt. For example, at the end of paragraph 25 Kingston says how her aunt is going through so much work to make herself look presentable, that she hoped the man she loved appreciated her and was not just a tits-and-ass man. Another example where Kingston feels sorry for her aunt is in paragraph 22. Kingston explains how she does not see herself like her aunt in anyway. Her aunt had two sides to her, a calm woman and a wild woman free with sex. Kingston was actually shocked by this and says, “Unless I see her life branching into mine, she gives me no ancestral help.” Despite the fact that Kingston ... ... middle of paper ... ...er ancestral culture in order to adapt to American values which still remain here in America. While at school she was practicing this “American- Feminine”, she was shaped as a child to respect honor, family and Chinese culture itself. Consequently, Kingston still started to steer off of her family beliefs. Even writing this book is ironic because even though she was told by her family not to tell anyone about her aunt, here she is writing a book about it. Throughout the book Kingston has this “love hate” relationship between her and her aunt. Kingston is either criticizing what her aunt has done or praising her for her efforts. However, this is only part of the real moral question of should she follow her Chinese beliefs or go towards American culture? In the end Kingston does an amazing job with her language to clearly express her feelings all throughout the essay.

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