In the essay “No Name Woman”, Maxine Hong Kinston explores her aunt’s life who secretly gets pregnant and commits suicide with her child when it is born in China. The story basically begins with her mum telling a story about her aunt’s scandal that had never been told to anyone in the past fifty years. After Kingston’s aunt’s husband had left to America for many years, her aunt gets pregnant. It is obvious that her aunt had committed adultery. The rural villagers furiously raided their house because her aunt’s adulterous behavior violates their community’s moral value. Finally, her aunt gave birth in the pigsty and drowned her child and herself in the family well. This appalling story led Kinston to carefully think about the huge difference between her …show more content…
I wholly concur with the feelings brought by Kinston that the punishment to her aunt is cruel. Though her aunt’s adulterous behavior is not acceptable by the Chinese community, the punishment to her is just too harsh. She was forgotten by her family members forever, not even a name. As Kinston mentioned at the very end of the essay, “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”. This clearly reveals how important of the family pride and reputation is to a Chinese family. As a Chinese girl growing up in a Chinese family, I know what it is really mean to my family exactly. I was taught to be a loyal and responsible person since I was a child. I know my family will be responsible for my wrongdoings, so I always follow the rules that my family gave to me because I do not want them to be ashamed of me. Hence, to some extent, we cannot avoid the influence of culture because it is invisible but powerful in different aspects of our
In the tale "No Name Woman," Kingston talks about common cultural practices in China. An aunt, in the story, also referred to as the "No Name Woman" committed adultery and was ostracized because of it. She was to bear the torture of humiliation, even by the aunt 's friends or family. The man who also committed adultery with her is not punished at all, thus, portraying major considerable inequality. Kingston does a wonderful job explaining his disgust of this rude, sexist behavior and believes that it does not receive the scorn it deserves.
Kieu Tran’s solemn tone reflects on the hardships that Americanization has caused Asians through the context of “the stereotype that Asian parents always hit their children” and how “Western culture and customs have destroyed the Vietnamese family structure”. Tran expresses how Americanization has given asian children more freedom, but in turn it has devastated the structure of a close-knit family. The U.S. is the land of the free, where people are protected by the law, and hitting your children is unjust. However, in asian culture, it is natural for a child to be reprimanded through spanking, hitting, or other forms of punishment. It ensures that children of asian parents will try their best to not make the same mistake again.
Essay 1 In “There is No Unmarked Women”, Deborah Tannen explains how women are forcibly “marked” no matter what. During a small work conference, Tannen observes many women’s appearance. She looks at their haircuts, clothing and the makeup they wear. She feels the women are all “Marked”, while men wear nothing to stand out.
With fear in her heart, Lindo Jong questions, “‘What is a true person?’ Would I change in the same ways the river changes color but still be the same person?” (Tan 58). Upon the journeys of life, a multitude of people question themselves, their lives, and their stances in this world. Within many cultures, the beliefs which ethnic backgrounds instill within the youth tend to lead these people to their self-identities.
According to Howard S. Becker, American Sociologist, culture is defined as the shared ways of a human social group that includes the ways of thinking, understanding, and feeling that have been gained through common experience and passed from generation to generation. Thus cultural understanding expects its people to have same beliefs, and brings people to act under cultural norms. However, when a person in a community has different beliefs than them, then culture oppresses that person’s life in order to make he/she live under cultural expectation or eliminate that person from its culture in the name of deviant. Culture can be a community with encouragement, comfort and peace but it also can be a cold isolated place for people with different beliefs. In both stories, “No Name Woman” and Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, describe isolated life of women under cultural oppression who deviated from
Throughout the novel, Amy Tan’s personal connection with the story exemplifies why The Joy Luck Club contributes to Chinese-American culture by providing an example of the struggle of communication between the Chinese immigrants and their American children. An incident that demonstrates this is when Lena attempts to explain her and Harold’s list to her mother (Tan 162). Contrasting each other, the two sets of ideas, Lena’s and her mother’s, conflict about Lena’s marriage situation. Worried that her daughter may make the same mistake as hers, Ying-Ying uses her Chinese ideals and past experiences to alleviate her daughter’s problem. However, Lena, unsure of how to deal with the situation, fails to explain or defend her marriage from her mother’s criticism because of the reason that Lena lacks her mother’s experience and was raised the American way, not the Chinese way.
In a woman’s lifetime, she is subjected to shaming, considered subclass, oppressed, evil, and her rights as a human being are completely disregarded. The No Name Woman, written by Maxine Hong Kingston, a Chinese American author and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, she tells the story of her Aunt that she never knew that had a baby out of wedlock, and then how she was terrorized by her fellow villagers. Similar to the Islamic women in the story Love and Sex in the Life of an Arab told by Nawal El Saadawi an Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician, and psychiatrist. The only use for a woman is procreation, taking care of their men, children, and home. The Arabic culture treats women much the same way that Maxine’s
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck displays a wide range of women from one being a slave to another being a great lady or beautiful concubine (prostitute). The faults and strengths in each female character range and create a society much like ours today. One society, which can contain traditions, but also may lack or set them aside as well. O-Lan a raised slave and Lotus a concubine (prostitute) are both momentous to the story and towards Wang Lung, the main character. O-Lan and Lotus have comparative and contrastive aspects, but each one of their significance plays some major roles in the novel towards the well being of traditions and to Wang Lung.
Depression is what people think about when they have been hurt emotionally or physically and it’s not a pleasant feeling. In Chinese Cinderella a story about a girl named Adeline Yen Mah, who all of her life she was physically abused and psychologically scarred. Her life shows a presidenting existence of depression. Chinese Cinderella is a depressing lifelong story, and it’s depressing because Adeline is abused, bullied, made fun of, humiliated, and emotionally scarred without thought of full recovery from all of those horrid memories. Chinese Cinderella is a depressing story about Adeline Yen Mah’s life in a harsh environment.
Which Mother Is Better Amy’s Mother Or Amy Chua It is commonly believed that parents’ love are strict because they wants their children can be an useful person to the society so, a lot of Chinese mothers always enforce their children to do something. These mothers have a common name “Tiger mother”.
The story illustrates the vulnerability, psychological void that pivots their bond that is being jeopardized by the intervention of an unborn child. The story's center of attention goes to Jigs. Jigs is the woman who happens to be pregnant. The subject matter of the story is whether she goes through having an abortion.
In the early 1900s, many women in the Chinese heritage were treated like slaves before they were married. Once they were married, their job was to bear the husband’s children and fulfill the household needs. However, in the novel “The Good Earth,” Wang Lung’s wife, O’lan, did not only bear his children and attend to the household needs, but she also worked in the fields with Wang Lung even when she was pregnant with his child. O’lan was always obedient to her husband and was always resourceful no matter what the situation was. Therefore, one could start to understand the many myriads of characters O’lan is and how she is considered to be the virtuous woman throughout the novel and all she truly wanted in life was to be wanted but never was
This paper reviews a book, “Empress Orchid” by Anchee Min. The setting of “Empress Orchid” was in Ch’ing dynasty from 1835 to 1908. It depicted the life journey of a young village girl, Orchid Yehonala who later became the last Empress of China. She was the eldest child of Hui Cheng Yehonala, a governor of a small town called Wuhu, in Anhwei province. However, he was dismissed from his position due to his failure in suppressing the Taiping peasant uprisings.
When I was young, I kept hearing from my Mother, “women should stay at home and do the household chores, such as cleaning the house and taken care of the family, while men is working and providing support for the family.” While growing up, I refuse to accepted it; I don’t want to be a domesticated woman only, I would like to have a career too. The poem of Julia Alvarez, “Woman’s Work”, reminds me of those old days when I was dreaming of my future. I can prove that managing the cleanliness of the house is a hard work. As what Alvarez stated, “Doing her woman’s work was a hard art.”
The four mothers under the influence of this culture, though in the United States, lived in the way of the Chinese people: filial piety, obedience, compliance with the Confucian tradition, and to educate their daughters. And her daughter, Waverly's boyfriend, went to Linda's birthday party to make mistakes, he not only pointed out Linda's cooking defects, but also directly called Linda's name. This American didn’t understand the power distance of the Chinese culture,it emphasized the respect of the elders, and can not directly call the elders name, which made Waverly greatly