Maxine Hong Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” is a story of a narrator who is trying to understand her past. She hears the story of her Aunt who was disowned and never spoken of by her family. The narrator produces the writings as an attempt to understand what really happened to her Aunt and how the occurrences of the Chinese culture fit into her own American lifestyle. She struggles with how to perceive her Aunt and the community that ultimately led her to her death. The narrator deals with her Aunt’s subjection and subjectivity throughout the story by looking at the different perspectives in every way she can before forming her own opinion. Though, by her going back and forth with all of the ideas, she starts to feel uncertain of which culture, Chinese or American she belongs in. She begins to feel trapped in between her two cultures.
The narrator is confused in what actually happened to her Aunt and why. In a way of dealing with the horrible things tha
t her Aunt experienced, she tries to think of all of the possibilities of why they occurred. At first, when she found out how horrible her death was, she was angry at the people of the community. She sees them as barbaric and horrible people, living in a society that is dominated by men. Yet later she takes into consideration that her aunt might have been a threat that harmed their village. She could have possibly been an individualist who wanted to go against the community. She also thinks she could have been raped and forced by the man she conceived the child with, or possibly she was just greatly in love. The narrator has a hard time trying to figure out the culture she believes and identifies with the most. She is struggling to decide if she should make herself completely “Americanized” and share the story of her aunt in a way that the aunt is the victim and not the killer, or continue to participate in punishing her Aunt even after her death.
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