Exploring Identity Through Silence: The Role of No-Name Woman in Woman Warrior Maxine Hong Kingston opens The Woman Warrior with the tale of her nameless aunt, a woman who has been silenced and forgotten by her village after giving birth to an illegitimate child, known only as the “no name woman” (Kingston 7). On the night that “no name woman” gives birth, villagers raid her family house to “show her a personal, physical representation of the break she had made in the ‘roundness’” (13). She later commits a “spite suicide” (19), drowning both herself and her child. The No-Name Woman serves as an embodiment of silence that allows the narrator to imaginatively develop her story, as well as her identity. The narrator also draws a connection between her aunt’s story and her own experience as the daughter of immigrants, demonstrating a disconnect between what she sees as traditional Chinese culture and American culture. No-Name Woman’s story is first introduced under a veil of threatening …show more content…
Growing up, she is repeatedly told by relatives that “There's no profit in raising girls. Better to raise geese than girls” and that “feeding girls is like feeding cowbirds” (54), comparisons that strip female children of their humanity and monetize their worth. Even as the narrator tries to assert that she is “not a bad girl” (55), the very structure of the language is gendered and works against her: “There is a Chinese word for the female I-which is 'slave.' Break the women with their own tongues!” (56). Eventually, she is reduced to thrashing on the floor and screaming incoherently, the power of speech having been stripped away from her. Since the narrator is unable to be anything other than a girl, despite going to college and marching “to change the world” (33), she has no way to act other than through speech, but her speech is perpetually