Comments on: No name woman

By: Carla

Carla — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:47:54 +0000

Comments for this post are closed. This post is saved for consulting only. Any new comments will be discarded.

By: Pedro Luna

Pedro Luna — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:41:05 +0000

If we stop to consider how many times we have discussed about gender roles, patriarchical values, sexism, we will notice this subject is apparently endless. We read about it so much this course that our minds seem to become numb. We tend get every new story with this subject and only throw it in the same “basket” of gender role stories and over; no more deep thinking.

However, by reading another gender role story from a new perspective, we are freshly invited to rethink everything we read and the numbness is temporarily decreased. What was already beginning to appear common – even when we didn’t agree – jumps in front of us clad in new suit, with new face screaming so that we don’t forget how things still are.

Nice SS.

By: Diana Castor

Diana Castor — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:36:28 +0000

Even nowadays Chinese women suffer with such patriarchal tradition. I dare to go further and remembering all oppressed female characters inth SS We have read and quotate Roberto Pompeo de Toledo when he said that to measure the levels of prejudice and delay of a society is to research over female roles inside it and how the are treated.

By: Jorgeane

Jorgeane — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:53:11 +0000

Fisrt of all seemed to me that being an Chinese immigrant daughther the author clearly describes her experiences living within two cultures: Chinese and American. The story is based on her own understanding of the patriarchal nature of traditional Chinese society, with very high stards, in which women were conditioned to do as they were told, without question, she also exposes the unfair discrimination against women in traditional Chinese society when she discusses how sons are celebrated more than daughters. She imagines that her aunt’s illegitimate child must have been a girl: “It was probably a girl; there is some hope of forgiveness for boys.”

I agree with the girls when they talk about about gender hole, patriarchal society, women submission and also about the auto-biographical thing. The indifference is no doubtly the worst punishment one can have, especially when it comes from one`s own family. There is nothing so painful as being left aside, forgotten.

By: Miss

Miss — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:55:23 +0000

This SS is very interesting and everybody said it shocked me too. To know about other culture is very important and improves our knowledge.
“The aunt’s narrative leads readers to understand the traditional view at a personal level. After being told the story of her aunt, Maxine realizes that there was a point to why her mother had told her about her aunt. The No Name Woman became a ghost to her family when she became pregnant.”source:sparknotes
The aunt and mother’s traditional point of view allow us to understand better the Americanized view of the daughter, and the oposite too.

By: Priscilla Ghetti

Priscilla Ghetti — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:41:16 +0000

I totally agree with Jean when he says that indifference is the worst punishment one can have, especially when it comes from one`s own family. There is nothing so painful as being left aside, forgotten.
Lucas called our attention to somethinh which is very important in this SS, its title. As he mentioned, A “no name woman” represents someone who has no identity, i.e., who doesn`t exist. Someone who has nothing remarkable, not even a name, to be remebered by people.
The Chinese values portrayed in the SS, as everybody has already described, also shocked me!

By: Mel

Mel — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:11:56 +0000

Yes, Veronica and Carol, the word is shock! What terrible things was inflicted to those women…
The SS was a really interesting way for us tu know more about the Chinese culture according to our point of view.
So much useless moralism and so much hypocrisy…
But I thought the narrative very confused, because I coulnd’t tell what was really true in the story and what was guessed by the narrator.

By: Barbara

Barbara — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:48:57 +0000

wow, intense story! the thing that sparked my interest was the fact that in that community there was no ‘private life’, anything that happened was everybody’s business, not in a ‘fofoqueiro’ type way but in the sense that this way of life was necessary for their survival, as they were all sort of a ‘big family’. life was all about working and survival….

It’s interesting how the worst punishment is facing ultimate death; not only a physical death, but a spiritual one, in which you are forgotten for ever, no descendents will pray for you, because they don’t know you….you don’t even have a name! It’s much worse than having to wear a scarlet letter…

I guess the narrator is trying to come to terms with both cultures, american, in which the sin is ‘exposed’ (of course she’s not trying to expose her aunt in a bad way, but just telling others what happened) and the Chinese, in which the sins and sinners are deliberately condemned to silence and obscurity….

By: Glaucia

Glaucia — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:08:14 +0000

This story shocked me… the Chinese values that are shown by the author are very shocking!

The story reflects the author’s personal life and it is interesting to notice how it is built. The stories the author heard had been told by her mother.

Whenever her mother wants to pass a value or warn her children, as the own author mentions: “Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strength to establish realities.” So, the mother’s author used to tell stories of their relatives to warn her children and these stories, so strong, had been never forgotten by the author as it was an important part of her childhood.

Maxine Kingston/the author was in search of her identity. There is a passage that illustrates it well: “I have not been able to stop my mother’s screams in public libraries or over telephones. Walking erect (knees straight, toes pointed forward, not pigeon-toed, which is Chinese-feminine) and speaking in an inaudible voice, I have tried to turn myself American-feminine.” So, we can say that she was involved with both cultures: Chinese and American. And she was trying to find out her identity between these two cultures in which she had been grown up; the American culture was the one she lived in and the Chinese culture was the one that her mother always refers to when she wanted to make her learn about something. and also she lived surrounded by some Chinese habits such as her mother’s loud voice.

And also: “If I made myself American-pretty so that the five or six Chinese boys in the class fell in love with me, everyone else- the Caucasian, Negro, and Japanese boys- would too. Sisterliness, dignified and honorable, made much more sense.” In this passage we can see that the author was so influenced by her mother’s stories, that she was always careful with her attitudes.

By: su

su — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 23:35:44 +0000

In this tragic story, the narrator’s paternal aunt drowned herself and her newborn baby in the family’s well after the villagers savaged the house, as a punishment for her illegitimate pregnancy. The scene of the raiding is described in great details and the most impressive part is the noise: the shouts of the villagers and the scream of the animals, but what is contrastively opposite to this noisy spectacle was the aunt’s silence. From the beginning of the raiding to the very end of it, facing the villagers’ oath and the family’s censure, the aunt kept silent all the way. There was no cry, no words, and even no sound. She suffered all this silently. She ran to the wild alone to give birth to a baby and then drowned the baby in the family’s well. The process from birth to death also happened in desperate silence. But silence never meant obedience. The aunt’s silence was not her submission. On the contrary, the aunt used the voicelessness to protest the male-dominated society.

After the daughter heard the story from her mother, she kept silent for twenty years seemingly. However,
behind her silence, her mind never stopped thinking. The mother attempted to suppress this story by forbidding the daughter to repeat it but this suppression evoked the daughter’s endless imagination. The daughter contrived different reasons for her aunt’s pregnancy: the aunt could have been a victim of rape and patriarchy; she could also have been a passionate seductress and an individualist. The daughter’s imagination moved from her sympathy toward the aunt to her approval of the aunt. The process of the imagination was the daughter’s process of maturing.