Fear, Bondage, and Anonymity: A Bildungsroman

              “No Name Woman” by Maxine Hong Kingston is an exquisitely written exploratory journey of a young girl trying to assimilate into American culture while struggling to balance her ancestral traditions and lifestyle. This is a sort of coming of age story, the maturation of a young Chinese-American girl during her formative years. Such ostracism and struggle often occur amongst emigrants in the “melting pot” of America where ideals and old traditions are threatened by a new environment, society, and community. After being informed of her aunt's demise, the narrator launches into perplexity and imaginative thoughts. She relates to her aunt because she too is struggling with keeping the customs, but in a different environment entirely. As she matures into womanhood, indicated by menstruation, she grows along with her ideas about her aunt's life. It is interesting how delicately and detailed she describes her imagined aunt’s scenarios with. Initially, her youth shines through as expressed in her choice of metaphors paired with an insuppressible infatuation with the opposite sex. As the hypotheses went on, they became more detailed and intertwined with her vernacular are tinges of corruption, sexually forbidden information, and crude jargon. 

There were many moments that made me stop and think, but this epiphanic moment was impossible to ignore.  "But there is more to this silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have. (Kingston, )"Up to this point, she had spent her life hypothesizing six or seven different scenarios for her aunt's turn of fate. Using her hypotheses as a distraction from her family and her struggles by relating small instances between old China and new China along with the past and the present. Now, she comes to the realization that her struggle is bigger than internal, it is one of generations, past and future. So instead of continually fantasizing she incorporates it into her life purpose.  The ending of the story is structured as an afterward, the narrator rendering her work in progress and how it shaped and continues to shape her life through a no name woman who means everything to her.

Two questions in particular arose after further analysis: 1. Since there is a reoccurring theme of bondage and enclosure, whether it be feet or the "round" community, was it irony that the no name woman met her fate inside a circular enclosed space? 2. Does the story give any hints on how to escape the circuity, or if Kingston desires to be freed?