Maxine Hong Kingston uses silence as an important concept in the book The Woman Warrior. As soon as the chapter “No Name Woman” starts it states, “You must not tell anyone” (1). The theme of silence is shown through the first sentence in this chapter. Kingston writes about her experience as being the first generation of Chinese in America. Kingston uses silence as a theme throughout this chapter to show how the Chinese are silent in their community so they do not disturb it or humiliate their family. In many families, it is normal to talk with your family members and trust them with family secrets. Kingston explains how her mother told her a story about her deceased aunt and tells her this story to scare her. "You must not tell anyone," …show more content…
This was a disgrace in the community and to her family so they did not mention her name. If they did not mention the aunt’s name, they are not going to mention the father of the child. Kingston writes, “She kept the man's name to herself throughout her labor and dying; she did not accuse him that he be punished with her. To save her inseminator's name she gave silent birth” (3). The “No Name Woman” did not give the name of the father of the baby because she did not want him to be punished …show more content…
Your father does not want to hear her name. She has never been born. I have believed that sex was unspeakable and words so strong and fathers so frail that "aunt" would do my father mysterious harm. I have thought that my family, having settled among immigrants who had also been their neighbors in the ancestral land, needed to clean their name, and a wrong word would incite the kinspeople even here. But there is more to this silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have. (4)
Kingston illustrates how the Chinese wanted a silent strict society and people were unable to have private secret lives. After being told this story, she feels bad for her aunt and tries to justify the story. She refuses to forget her deceased aunt and tries to give “No Name Woman” an identity. Most of this chapter is about Kingston’s mother telling her about the aunt she never knew she had. Also, the other part of this chapter is how Kingston’s imagination plays a major role. She imagines how her aunt was, if Marmo
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
In Maxine Hong Kingston story, “No Name Woman,” the author told a story of her aunt who was punished for committing adultery and died in order to express her thought and spirit of revolt of the patriarchal oppression in the old Chinese society. My essay will analyze the rhetoric and the technique of using different narrators to represent the article and expound the significance of using those methods in the article.
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.
Instead of using the aunt as a way to warn her daughter of the consequences of having sex they may have warned her of men and the situations that girls may be in if they do not know some men’s intentions. The mother tells Kingston “Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us” (Kingston 794). This statement leads us to believe that since the daughter is now considered a woman she has the possibility to shame her family, instead of a warning to protect her virtue it’s a warning to not disgrace the family. The man in the story may very likely have raped her and left her to deal with the consequences. The culture does not warn the daughter to be wary of men, but that she will most likely be the cause of her own
This title stuck out for me. Instinctively I knew that the title foreshadows the events of the novel. By the end of the chapter I found the symbols that Foster had so greatly stressed in his novel. One symbol that I considered important is the fact that Liu Lang doesn’t seem to remember Precious Auntie’s name. This seems to pose a question and mystery about Precious Auntie’s identity and is the start of the journey towards Ruth gaining the answers. In the chapter Truth Liu Lang placed Precious Auntie’s name in the “trunk of best things” (Tan 8). This indicates that Precious Auntie is important, cherished, and crucial to the plot; through such foreshadows, I learned the plot of the novel was a journey of remembering Precious Auntie’s name, and the theme was of revelations and realizations. For this reason I consider the main protagonist to be Precious Auntie because it’s through her that the plot and theme are
Silence in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, is used as a response to mistreatment, prejudice, racism and other immoral actions between people. In a hostile environment, Naomi, along with all the other Japanese Canadians, choose to employ this silence as a response to racism. Allow this mistreatment to continue, the acts committed against them could only grow with time, as well as a culture of hatred towards them.
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.
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.
She also questions who she really is, and where she belongs in her family. Maxine Hong Kingston begins her search with the story of an aunt, to whom the first chapter in No Name Woman talks about. Throughout the story, Maxine tries to define whether she can see herself as a product of her family’s history and how their story may define her as an individual. Maxine is also concerned with exploring how her Chinese culture can be submissive with her emerging sense of self as an American. Kingston must learn more about what Chinese cultural history really is.
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.
As stated above in the summary Kingston believed that when going to Chinese school everyone must be quiet and not talk about their past. This is shown first when Kingston refers to her estranged Aunt who murdered herself and her child. Her family disowned her because she was pregnant by another villager who was not her husband. Kingston’s family disowned her aunt because of what she did. Therefore Kingston’s family kept quiet about this because this was a disgrace to their heritage along with their culture. In reading The Woman Warrior, we see that Kingston is naturally quiet and socially awkward. When she begins to write the real Kingston begins to unfold. Kingston then develops her own voice and has a say in what she feels and in what she believes in. In the article Cutting the Tongue: Language and the Body in Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, it shows and sparks the question should Kingston’s views of the Chinese culture and the Chinese-American culture. Although the book does seem very biased Kinston develops a voice. The article then defends Kingston’s biased racial views. In actuality her views help contribute and validate the stereotype of Chinese culture and the American-Chinese cultural tradition. This also fits in with cultural theory because it reflects how the cultures are
Therefore, she gave her name to her son. I agree with Breslin because I think that people should follow the tradition, family togetherness, and history. When couples decide to get married, something they need to consider is if they would like to follow the tradition of taking the male’s last name as their family surname. Even though she is a “feminist”, “this is not a feminist issue” for me.
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.
In Maxine Hong Kingston’s autobiographical piece “Silence”, she describes her inability to speak English when she was in grade school. Kindergarten was the birthplace of her silence because she was a Chinese girl attending an American school. She was very embarrassed of her inability, and when moments came up where she had to speak, “self-disgust” filled her day because of that squeaky voice she possessed (422). Kingston notes that she never talked to anyone at school for her first year of silence, except for one or two other Chinese kids in her class. Maxine’s sister, who was even worse than she was, stayed almost completely silent for three years. Both went to the same school and were in the same second grade class because Maxine had flunked kindergarten.
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...