"The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family's deliberately forgetting her. Her betrayal so maddened them, they saw to it that she would suffer forever, even after death. Always hungry, always needing..." (140)
Whenever the narrator of No Name Woman is faced with a change in her life, her mother supplies her with a parable; a story to grow up on as if these tales could somehow establish a reality. In this case it is the story of her mother's brother, an aunt forgotten by both family and time. The intended lesson of the story was one of abstinence, an alternative to the expected story of the birds and the bees. The narrator instead took a different meaning, one tied to her struggles assimilating into U.S. culture as a first American generation.
The societal and cultural expectations of the United States and China are two sides of different coins of different currency. American women are flirtatious and bold while Chinese women are expected to be meek and follow orders, as seen in the back story the narrator created for her aunt. The narrator is confused by which role she should take and is further torn by the impact such a decision has on her role in the family. Should she adapt to an American lifestyle where she forgets the past and live in the present? Or should she live in the past, worshiping ancestors and hoping to be remembered?
Question: Does the narrator's anonymity in the story reflect the choice she made to devote pages to her forgotten aunt's spirit?
Showing posts with label Maxine Hong Kingston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maxine Hong Kingston. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Is Silence "Golden"?
Silence is customary in the Chinese culture. No Name Woman begins with silence when the narrator's mother says, "You must not tell anyone" (139). Throughout the story, the narrator has a constant struggle with the idea of silence. "But there is more to this silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have" (146). By following her mother's instructions, the narrator has actively participated in her aunt's punishment by remaining silent and allowing her aunt to remain anonymous and forgotten.
Ultimately, she knows that if she were to do wrong, her family would shame her through silence as well. "The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family's deliberately forgetting her. Her betrayal so maddened them, they saw to it that she would suffer forever, even after death" (146). This story is proof that the imposed/implied culture of silence and shame, within a traditional Chinese family, is not always golden.
Is the fact that the narrator is anonymous, also an example of silence and secrecy?
Ultimately, she knows that if she were to do wrong, her family would shame her through silence as well. "The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family's deliberately forgetting her. Her betrayal so maddened them, they saw to it that she would suffer forever, even after death" (146). This story is proof that the imposed/implied culture of silence and shame, within a traditional Chinese family, is not always golden.
Is the fact that the narrator is anonymous, also an example of silence and secrecy?
Who is the No Name Woman?
"In the twenty years since I heard this story, I have not asked for details nor said my aunt's name: I do not know it. People who can comfort the dead can also chase after the, to hurt them further-- a reverse ancestor worship. The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the village, but the family's deliberately forgetting her. " p. 16, No Name Woman
Throughout No Name Woman, the narrator shown a struggle with her family's silence as she attempts to determine where she fits into the world as a woman, as a person who is Chinese, and as a person who is from her specific family. The story progresses in a series of conjectures about who the aunt was, and how her life came to pass, but because of the family's silence, the narrator doesn't actually know the reality of her aunt's situation, and even more importantly, has not asked. The passage above seems to be a moment of clarity about the role of family-- that within family exists a power over (and to some degree, a responsibility for) their own kin's existence. And so, in the overarching question of what is determined by culture and what is determined by family, we see that while both have the potential and the convention to pass along tradition and history, within the idea of "family' lies this much darker power. Thus, we are affronted by the idea of a "No Name Woman": perhaps a woman such as the narrator's aunt who has been pushed into nonexistence by her family's silence or perhaps a woman such as the narrator (who, it is to be noted, does not present us with her own name) whose identity is being formed under the heavy influence of things unspoken.
Question:
How has the identity of both the narrator and her aunt been affected by the repression of her aunt's memory?
Throughout No Name Woman, the narrator shown a struggle with her family's silence as she attempts to determine where she fits into the world as a woman, as a person who is Chinese, and as a person who is from her specific family. The story progresses in a series of conjectures about who the aunt was, and how her life came to pass, but because of the family's silence, the narrator doesn't actually know the reality of her aunt's situation, and even more importantly, has not asked. The passage above seems to be a moment of clarity about the role of family-- that within family exists a power over (and to some degree, a responsibility for) their own kin's existence. And so, in the overarching question of what is determined by culture and what is determined by family, we see that while both have the potential and the convention to pass along tradition and history, within the idea of "family' lies this much darker power. Thus, we are affronted by the idea of a "No Name Woman": perhaps a woman such as the narrator's aunt who has been pushed into nonexistence by her family's silence or perhaps a woman such as the narrator (who, it is to be noted, does not present us with her own name) whose identity is being formed under the heavy influence of things unspoken.
Question:
How has the identity of both the narrator and her aunt been affected by the repression of her aunt's memory?
Parallels and Circles
Maxine Hong Kingston's "No Name Woman" from the book, The Woman Warrior (1975)
There are two points that stood out to me in this story, parallels and circles.
This story highlights how traditions in cultures affect families for generations to come. The narrator receives the warning from her mother, 'Don't humiliate us' (5). She instills fear into the narrator by relating the story of her aunt, who broke the rules, bringing shame to the family.
Throughout the story, the narrator contemplates actions and consequences for this unknown aunt while processing how the aunt's story applies to her own life: "Unless I see her life branching into mine, she gives me no ancestral help (10). What strikes me the most here is that the narrator has only been told a brief story about her unnamed aunt, but the narrator (also unnamed), has developed several different scenarios about how her aunt had become pregnant and defiled the family name. It is obvious that women had no value of their own, for even if she was raped, she would still have faced the same consequences.
The narrator tries to make sense of what happened to the aunt, or could happen to her, through a parallel of what her own life and actions could be, especially in light of her newer Chinese-American lifestyle. She tells the readers that her aunt "once found a freckle on her chin" and seared it with a needle to remove it, cleaning it with peroxide. There is no way that she could have this information since no one will talk about the aunt. I believe that she is talking about herself here, and overlapping her life with her aunt's.
The symbol of circles, of things that are "round" also stand out in the story. "The round moon cakes and round doorways, the round tables...one roundness inside another, round windows and rice bowls...this roundness had to be made coin-sized so that she would see its circumference"(13).
These circles are representative of the family circle, which, in Chinese culture, is also encompassed by the community circle. The circle keeps the family and community strong. It protects each of them and keeps intruders out, but it also keeps the narrator imprisoned by her own family culture and tormented by the possibility of her own failures.
Question: Do you think the narrator is defending the aunt or is she condemning her too?
There are two points that stood out to me in this story, parallels and circles.
This story highlights how traditions in cultures affect families for generations to come. The narrator receives the warning from her mother, 'Don't humiliate us' (5). She instills fear into the narrator by relating the story of her aunt, who broke the rules, bringing shame to the family.
Throughout the story, the narrator contemplates actions and consequences for this unknown aunt while processing how the aunt's story applies to her own life: "Unless I see her life branching into mine, she gives me no ancestral help (10). What strikes me the most here is that the narrator has only been told a brief story about her unnamed aunt, but the narrator (also unnamed), has developed several different scenarios about how her aunt had become pregnant and defiled the family name. It is obvious that women had no value of their own, for even if she was raped, she would still have faced the same consequences.
The narrator tries to make sense of what happened to the aunt, or could happen to her, through a parallel of what her own life and actions could be, especially in light of her newer Chinese-American lifestyle. She tells the readers that her aunt "once found a freckle on her chin" and seared it with a needle to remove it, cleaning it with peroxide. There is no way that she could have this information since no one will talk about the aunt. I believe that she is talking about herself here, and overlapping her life with her aunt's.
The symbol of circles, of things that are "round" also stand out in the story. "The round moon cakes and round doorways, the round tables...one roundness inside another, round windows and rice bowls...this roundness had to be made coin-sized so that she would see its circumference"(13).
These circles are representative of the family circle, which, in Chinese culture, is also encompassed by the community circle. The circle keeps the family and community strong. It protects each of them and keeps intruders out, but it also keeps the narrator imprisoned by her own family culture and tormented by the possibility of her own failures.
Question: Do you think the narrator is defending the aunt or is she condemning her too?
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?
No Name Village
The moment:
Page 13
"The frightened villagers, who depended on one another to maintain the real, went to my aunt to show her a personal, physical representation of the break she had made in the "roundness". Misallying couples snapped off the future, which was the be embodied in true offspring. The villagers punished her for acting as if she could have a private life, secret and apart from them."
This moment was chosen because it sheds light on the complexity of villager's motives to raid the aunt's home. The pregancy is seen as something more than an isolated moral infraction contained within one person (a la Hester Prynne), but rather as an act against the village itself. The villagers, in fear, seem to feel they are raiding out of self defense. The calculated nature of the raid suggests this as well; amidst all the chaos, there remains some conformity to protocol, and the villagers sob only in anticipation of future hunger pangs. They know that despite their rectifying actions, this doesn't change the fact that there will be another mouth to feed. Uncertainty presses itself upon this village, and the very poor of rural China feel that the only way to have a chance at survival is to dissolve all notions of individuality for the sake of community. The issue with the pregnancy is not one of sexuality, but of compromised lineage. It seems that the aunt had compromised the future.
Yet, in resurrecting the aunt, the narrator considers that maybe the aunt wasn't trying to have a separate life at all. Maybe she was being raped, and knowing that drama like that would shake an already fragile community, she put herself second and "did as she was told" (page 6). Throughout her pregnancy and birth she refused to identify the father, again putting community and others before herself. Yet class has determined the severity of the aunt's punishment, the famine times enhancing the group mentality and turning mistake into crime (page 13). The village, jaded by hunger and uncertainty, created a rift in their community that came back to hurt them. After giving birth, the aunt refused to leave her baby in the mud in exchange for the outcast table because she realized the cost of destroying people for the sake of survival. In an act mirroring her own ostracism, she rejected the village, forgetting it completely as she lie on her back becoming "...one of the stars, a bright dot in blackness." Yet where the village raid was coldly methodological, the aunt has malice in her heart, and chooses to taint the village well in her final, and only, act of retribution.
Question:
What does is the story suggesting about the state of the village, which is vigilant about maintaining order, when it is clear that some find death a more welcoming alternative?
Edit: on revisiting The Scarlet Letter, I am questioning my statement that the aunt's situation is very different from Hester Prynne's.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Necessity, Adultery, and Wastefulness
“No Name Woman” by Maxine Hong Kingston (1975) Chapter from the book: The Woman Warrior
As a Chinese-American woman, the narrator is trying to make sense of her aunt story in order to draw up a comparison between her own life as a first generation American and her aunt’s life in a poverty stricken Chinese village in order to form her own identity.
Moment: When the narrator explains traditional Chinese views about Necessity and Adultery/Extravagance, “My mother has told me once and for all the useful parts. She will add nothing unless powered by Necessity, a riverbank that guides her life…Adultery is extravagance… –Could such people engender a prodigal aunt? To be a women, to have a daughter in starvation time was a waste enough. ” Pg. 6 (141 of Course Packet)
This moment is key in understanding the critique that the narrator is making about traditional Chinese culture and race. Her mother telling her the useful parts means that her mother has only revealed enough of the story to teach her a lesson about the values of her culture. The mother’s life is guided by necessity with a capital N and it becomes an important reoccurring theme in the narrator’s understanding of her race and why members of her family chose to immigrate to California. The “useful parts” are what the narrator associates with being the traditional Chinese views. The story of her aunt with no name, whether true or not, makes the narrator aware of at least three maxims that must guide her actions. She must not be extravagant. She must not be adulterous. And she must not be wasteful. The narrator describes the “wastefulness” of being a woman in “old China” as originating from poverty. She later attributes the perceived severity of adultery as also stemming from the poverty of the village. The phrase “prodigal aunt” is an interesting word choice because prodigal means wasteful or recklessly extravagant and relates back to the offenses, which her mother warns her against. There is plot holes in the aunt’s story which the narrator fills with the aforementioned maxims inculcated in her by her mother while at the same time attempting to compromise these views with her own anxieties regarding rape or being “American pretty/feminine” in order to attract boys her age in America without losing the values of her race.
Question:
Particularly in immigrant cultures, is it possible to fully acculturate into a country that propagates values that directly contradict those of your Race?
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