eMaria-Gloria Contrada Introduction to Literature Professor Obuch 9 October 2014 Paper I Often when first-generation immigrants come to America, they make little effort to assimilate into American culture and do their utmost to retain their customs and languages. In contrast, many second-generation immigrants find it necessary to discard the culture that had been preserved in the home for biological descent does not ensure feelings of cultural identity. In both Maxine Hong Kingston’s No Name Woman and Richard Rodriguez’s Mr. Secrets, the two authors describe the clash between their American upbringing and their ancestral culture, heightened by their struggle between the private and the public, thus secrecy/discretion versus openness. Their internal conflicts with cultural hybridity and their shame at the secrecy of their family, prompts Kingston and Rodriguez to use writing as means of reaching a catharsis. The first lines of Maxine Hong Kingston’s story begin with "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." These lines reveal the erasure of her aunt’s existence by her family in order restore honor for the actions of a woman who delineates from Chinese, patriarchal customs in the pursuit of love. The story of No Name Woman serves as a backdrop for Kingston 's own