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Summary Of No Name Woman By Maxine Hong Kinston

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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

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