Roundness In No Name Woman

My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech using the kind of English I have never used with her.”(417) Overcoming the barrier between languages she spoke aided Tan in building a bridge between cultures. She changed her language to assimilate into American culture while also keeping familial culture. A piece of heritage that uses a language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk. Tan grew up with this language and she still uses it with her mother, husband and in her books. (418) Another method to find identity in a new host society is through appearance. In the essay, “No Name Woman” by Maxine Kingston ideals in appearance were passed from generation to generation. Altering ideals when creating identity is noticed in Kingston’s essay. A long held tradition in many Chinese families is that many generations live under the same roof and this can cause a conflict in ideals. Conflicting ideals between generations is shown as Tan tells how the younger generation hid the identities of their sexual color and their character. Hiding these new identities they hoped to avoid potential conflict with generational ideals. Kingston did not hide her identity, she found herself “walking erect (knees straight, toes pointed forward, not pigeon-toed, which is Chinese-feminine) and speaking in an audible

Can you imagine that everyone rejects you just because you are a girl? That actually happened universally in the last century, specifically in the old China. The gender discrimination was deeply rooted in people’s minds and became a traditional Chinese thinking. Wayson Choy illustrates this kind of discrimination really well in his novel The Jade Peony. In the novel, Grandmother continually reminds Jook-Liang that girl-child is useless, it affect Jook-Liang thinks about people, and change the views of various people. Also, it makes her struggle to assimilate to Chinese and Canadian society. Though, she tries her best to revolt

The Portrayal of the Plight of Women by the Author, In Their Particular Period of Time

Woman deserve to be treated with respect, they deserve equal rights. In this paper, I will provide evidence that gender roles have not changed over the period of time between the writing of The Death of Woman Wang and the dragon’s village. The Death of Woman Wang was written by Jonathan Spence; it was published in 1978. The dragon’s village was written by Yuan-Tsung Chen, it was published in 1980.

Throughout the novel The Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, the past is incorporated into the present through talk-stories combined into each chapter. Kingston uses talk-stories, to examine the intermingling of Chinese myths and lived experiences. These stories influence the life of the narrator as the past is constantly spoken about from the time she is young until the novel ends and she becomes an adult. Kingston incorporates two cultures. She is not a direct recipient of Chinese culture, but she has her own sense of talk-story, that she learns from her mother, which tells the old Chinese stories with a sense of myth, in a new American way. This is a way of weaving two cultures together, bringing the Chinese past into her present American life.

In “No Name Woman,” the theme of silence starts with the elementary words of the memoir stating you must not tell anyone. This statement is ironic because Kingston is in fact telling everyone, giving voice to Chinese customs and the lives that are foregone. As written in her memoir, she states, “You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born.” (Deshazer 308). It is especially notable and ironic that the memoir begins with the phrase “You must not tell anyone.” Her effort in No Name Woman is to write about that which is never said; her unnamed dead aunt, and the outrageous behaviors in her mother’s Chinese village. Kingston was not necessarily silenced direct by a male figure; however, the words said by her mother “You must not tell anyone” is a representation of Kingston father’s authorization voice through her mother’s explanation. Kingston’s effort is also about discovering a voice, as both a Chinese-American

Furthermore, in part tree, The Widow, Spence urges the reader of woman's values and her characteristics in T'an-ch'eng county. Through the Local History Spence defines the meaning of property in the seventeen century China. Women like any other piece of

The theme of “voiceless woman” throughout the book “the woman warrior” is of great importance. Maxine Kingston narrates several stories in which gives clear examples on how woman in her family are diminished and silenced by Chinese culture. The author not only provides a voice for herself but also for other women in her family and in her community that did not had the opportunity to speak out and tell their stories.

Maxine Kingston in “The Women Warrior” presents a traditional Chinese society that anticipates women not to decide what is best for them all by themselves. Kingston creates a woman who goes beyond this ritual culture constraint and who take up

These expectations increased when she was in the presence of “great power, [her] mother talking story” (20). In one particular situation, the narrator recalls her mother singing about Fa Mu Lan, the woman warrior. Although her mother expected her daughter to become a wife or a slave, the narrator had a different idea; she would “grow up a woman warrior” (20). As a young girl, she said that she “couldn’t tell where the stories left off and the dreams began” (19). This is the case in “White Tigers.” The narrator’s dream-state takes readers into the mind of a girl who attempts to please her mother and entire family by becoming a woman warrior. This is possibly an attempt to subside much of the harsh ridicule she receives from her mother due to cultural differences. Although this is a key factor in her early childhood, she learns to block out these criticisms as she grows older.

Medieval China, as seen in the Stories from a Ming Collection, was characterized by distinct separations between men and women’s abilities, typical old fashioned family structure, and a desire to advance their social status. Throughout all the stories in this book, it dives deep into different aspects of how men and women are treated, how families were structured and how that affects their lives, as well as the values these people held. A very common trend in the stories was how different men and women were treated and the limitations they may or may not had.

In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston crafts a fictitious memoir of her girlhood among ghosts. The book’s classification as a memoir incited significant debate, and the authenticity of her representation of Chinese American culture was contested by Asian American scholars and authors. The Woman Warrior is ingenuitive in its manipulation of the autobiographical genre. Kingston integrates the value of storytelling in her memoir and relates it to dominant themes about silence, cultural authenticity, and the cultivation of identity. Throughout her work, Kingston reaches a variety of conclusions about the stories her mother told her by writing interpretations of her mother, Brave Orchid’s, “talk-story”. Brave Orchid’s talk-story is a form

Women did not have any power in Chinese culture. Kingston describes how a man intimidates her aunt by telling her that he will beat and kill her if she tells anyone. It shows men dominance over women because the man is making Kingston’s aunt do anything he wants. In paragraph fifteen, “women in the old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil” (623). It adds to how women in China did not have any voice and were supposed to comply with any thing men said. Women had to be protective mothers. Kingston states, “as a last act of responsibility: She would protect this child as she had protect its father… mothers who love their children take them along” (629). This quote means that women would protect their children and always look out for the best interest for them. Women had to provide food for their family and their gods. In paragraph thirteen, “she plants vegetables gardens rather than lawns; she carries the odd-shaped tomatoes home from the fields and eats food left for the gods” (622). It shows one duty of women in Chinese culture and the role they had to follow.

When it comes to discussing the manners and customs that dominated in China in the past century, numerous topics appear. Thanks to the numerous written testimonies, we can almost reconstruct the life and experiences of people in ancient China. Of course, many of the practices described are not only interesting, but surprising. In this paper I am going to take a closer look at the status of women in ancient Chinese family.

The books I’ve chosen to review are set on two different continents. This makes the comparison of the lives of women across the world more efficient and broader. What makes the comparison more practical, realistic and interesting is the fact that the characters in the two books 'The Woman Warrior ' and 'Wild ', lived in the same century. The authors specifically bring out the duties and the expectation that mothers were held to in the upbringing of their daughters as at that time and place. The authors, however, present the picture of motherhood in a fairly narrow view. They ignore the role of mothers in the upbringing of their sons and instead dwell on their duties and responsibilities in the bringing up of their daughters (Kingston & Gordon 2005). Therefore, I chose to compare how the theme of motherhood has been portrayed in the two ethnically diverse texts.