"No Named Woman" comes from a collection of memoirs titled "The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts" by Maxine Hong Kingston. 


In Maxine Hong Kingston's story "No Name Woman", I feel the author does not honor her aunt by retelling the story.  The author talks about how her family never speaks her name.  "We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born." (1568)  Her aunt has disgraced her family and brought shame to them.  "Don't tell anyone you had an aunt.  Your father does not want to hear her name.  She has never been born." (1576)  The author feels that by retelling the story she is honoring her aunt in a way her family was never able to do.  But the beliefs of her family show that even today, 50 years later, they are still afraid of the spirits of their ancestors.  They want her to suffer forever, even after her death.  "The Chinese are always very frightened of the drowned one." (1577)

At first I thought that she was showing her aunt some honor by telling the story and saying that she did exist, even if her family denied her.  But after reading it again, I respect how strongly her family feels about it.  We all have "rules" or traditions handed down from generations, and maybe we don't like all of them but there are some that need to be respected.

I loved this story, how vivid it is and how imaginative Kingston gets with how she perceived her aunts last hours.  At the same time, why this?  Why now?  Why bring pain to her family again after they expressly asked her not to?  "...What happened to her could happen to you." (1570) "You wouldn't want to be forgotten as if you had never been born."  Her mother clearly tells her the story as a warning, as a way to teach her a lesson.  She just didn't want her to have sex or to get pregnant. 

Adultery is definitely looked at differently today that it was back then but she respects other aspects of her culture, why not this one?