CHAPTER SUMMARIES WITH NOTES / ANALYSIS

CHAPTER 1: "No Name Woman"

Notes

This first chapter of Kingston's memoirs is often difficult to follow, for it is highly improvisational. Since the author lacks concrete and sure knowledge of her aunt's actions or motivation, Kingston must reconstruct the scenes with imagination. She comes up with several scenarios, each one temporarily considered and a provisional possibility, to explain her aunt's life and death. The aunt might have fallen in love and become pregnant; she might have been raped; or she might have been promiscuous. Kingston also provides scenarios, which picture the aunt differently from Brave Orchid's image of her as a prodigal daughter who brought down shame upon the family. In Kingston's versions, the aunt becomes a highly imaginative woman who goes against custom, and a loving mother, and an injured member of the community.

Most importantly, Kingston keeps reminding the reader of why she is so concerned about her aunt. The aunt's story has been taught as a negative lesson on womanhood. Kingston's mother has warned her daughter repeatedly to obey all the rules or share the same destiny as the aunt. Ironically, as a Chinese-American, Kingston has been breaking the rules of traditional China all along. She identifies with the no name aunt as a female ancestor who also broke the rules of tradition.

It is important to note that Kingston dwells the longest on what she admits to be the least likely scenario for her aunt--the love story. For a Chinese-American girl, this story is the most appealing, for it features an imaginative, brave, and unique woman who goes against the norm. This version, however, is highly unlikely because that kind of romantic love is a Western invention reinforced in the movies. Kingston alternates between a fantasy about a love affair and a more accurate historical reconstruction that honors the truth of the hard life of women in the old China. As a result, the reader must carefully follow the alternatives and digressions that characterize the chapter.

It is also important to remember that the book begins with a warning to keep silent, a theme that Kingston will return to again and again. Kingston is trying to establish her own voice as a Chinese-American woman, which is difficult. She comes out of a heritage, which silences women, and she is now forced to straddle two very different cultures. She identifies with her silent ancestor, who disobeyed the rules for women, and was squelched for it. Kingston brings this forgotten ancestor to life by creating different versions of the story to imbue the aunt with motivation, personality, and power. She also defies her mother's warning by telling the story.

Kingston intentionally includes several anachronisms in her story. For instance, she describes the aunt cleaning a wound with peroxide. It is very unlikely that in her country, her aunt would have had access to peroxide. She also refers to origami, a Japanese art form of folding paper that was unknown in the aunt's time. The anachronisms, however, seem normal as Kingston weaves the past and present together throughout the chapter. She begins the first section of the book in the past, when she was a young girl entering puberty, she then goes back to scenes and stories from China, then she jumps forward to the present when she is a mature woman writing her memoirs. In this interweaving of past and present, she is able to show the importance of her cultural past in her present life. She also sets a structural pattern for the entire book.