A Critical Analysis of "No Name Woman"
             Times are different depending on which society one happens to come upon, and no one person has the ability to see everyone's point of view. In Maxine Hong Kingston's short story "No Name Woman", there is the belief that the narrator is faced with pressures from a deeply entwined, scapegoating and contradicting community. In this story while the aunt goes through a major ordeal, the rest of the village takes it personally. The story itself put it so splendidly,
             "The villagers punished her for acting as if she could have a private life, secret and apart from them." (p. 396)
             The narrator was told a story from her Chinese culture, of a forgotten aunt whose husband went away to America. During his absence the aunt mysteriously became with child. No one questioned her on how the child was miraculously conceived. Instead they attacked her and her family, showing their shame of the situation they were unwillingly placed in. The Villagers ransacked the family's house and belongings; even her own flesh and blood, her family, later joined the accusations. After she gave birth, the aunt took what little pride she had left, and committed suicide in such a manner, that no matter how they tried to erase her existence, the "weeping ghost" would remain to haunt them all.
             Chinese communities were too deeply routed to have solitary life; almost everyone in the village is connected to every other by blood or marriage. In China, families are very proud of their way of life and village around them, particularly those people related through marriage. Traditionally family ties were very strong; when a Chinese woman married a Chinese man, she was forced to shed her biological family, and join her husband's family. The woman would move in, and become a part of the extensive group of aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, parents and children, forming a perfe...