No Name Women by Maxine Hong Kingston

No Name Women by Maxine Hong Kingston

Context

I choose to analyze the first part of the passage, which is about Kingston’s aunt back in China, whose family tried to forget her name. This part of the passage is situated at the beginning of the text before Kingston resolves the war within herself, and the evolution of the female identity follows it. My reaction to the passage changes positively in relation to the scenes, characters, and narration that came after this part because they shift the point of view on the emphasis Chinese culture places on social cohesion. As a result, I can embrace the tremendous cultural diversity of women.

Speaker

The speaker in the passage is Brave Orchid, who is Kingston’s mother because she is narrating the story of her daughter for Kingston to make sense out of it. However, Brave Orchid is biased because her words are tinged with conservative disapproval of the No Name Woman’s behavior by portraying her as a woman of loose morals. Brave Orchid links the woman’s ostracism, humiliation, and death to her indulgence in illicit sex and warns her daughter against such acts as they could humiliate the family. She says, “Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don’t humiliate us.”

Chronology

The events, dialogue, and appearance of characters in the passage follow a non- chronological order. This type of arrangement is essential for the readers as it creates character empathy. Shifting forth and back enables readers to unravel the past and understand ramifications of the present by creating suspense into wanting to know what happened back then that is causing suffering in character. For example, in the passage, we get to learn that the No Name Woman killed herself before we know about the circumstances leading to her death.

Concepts

The main ideas that the passage is trying to communicate are cultural reconciliation and the importance of ethical values. The passage portrays the integration of Chinese and American cultures through Brave Orchid narrating tales to Kingston for her to uncover the Chinese cultural history. Thus, it represents the transition of  Chinese cultural traditions to the first generation of Chinese American culture. Brave Orchid narrates the story to help Kingston conduct herself properly according to the Chinese codes of values. Brave Orchid discourages Kingston from engaging in behaviors such as premarital sex that would result in adverse consequences.

Imagery

Imagery, such as metaphors are used in the passage to deliver the main ideas of the story. The phrase, “You must not tell anyone what I am about to tell you” is a metaphor of the Chinese-American woman struggling to find a voice after being silenced by men for long. However, by writing the memoir, Kingston is telling everyone of her willingness to break power over those holding her back (Ng, 2019).  “We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born” serves to enforce good morals by warning about the consequences of bad behavior.

Language

The passage’s language employs formal language and unconventional sentences. The writing’s language is official as it uses full words and avoids colloquial expressions to ensure that the readers understand the message as informal language can, at times, be confusing given informal terms can have varied meanings. The structure of the unconventional sentences is based on relative clauses that provide information about a noun clause. For example, “In China, your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well “.Without the relative clauses, the sentences could quickly become relatives resulting in the passage becoming boring

Reference

Ng, A. (2019). Written by the body: Evolutions of embodiment in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and I Love a Broad Margin to My Life. Melus, 44(3), 155–174. doi: 10.1093/melus/mlz021