Maxine Hong Kingston No Name Woman

The essay “No Name Woman” by Maxine Hong Kingston, first published in 1975, is about the narrator’s parental aunt who committed suicide after she had given birth to an illegitimate child. She reflects upon her identity as a Chinese-American woman when she remembers the story her mother told her 20 years ago, right after she reached puberty.
The mother told the narrator that she had a parental aunt, whose name remains unknown. This aunt lived in a Chinese village and became pregnant, long after her husband had left the country. In 1924, he had headed to the USA for economic reasons, like many other male members of the family. Those who got working contracts in the USA went there for a few years to financially support the family members who stayed in China. Since infidelity was considered a crime in the village the aunt lived in, the family never addressed this pregnancy. The mother has noticed that the belly of her husband’s sister had been growing, but she ignored possibility that the aunt could have been pregnant due to her husband’s

When considering that her aunt might have been raped, she highlights how women in old China had no other option than obeying the men. Furthermore, she emphasizes how women were perceived as a burden during poor economic times, since they, unlike the men, could not be sent to the United States to earn money for the rest of the family. She also describes the double standards that existed when it came to following traditions: her aunt was severely punished for breaking the traditions, whereas male family members who went to the USA have embraced the western lifestyle without any consequences. She says that the only mistake her aunt made was that she has expected to have a right to privacy in a society which did not grant such rights to its members, and that her aunt was unlucky to live during bad