Literature Analysis
The Silent Treatment: Suppression of the Voice in The Woman Warrior and When Living Was A Labor Camp
Gloria Anzaldúa, in her novel Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, proclaims that “I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence” (81). Anzaldúa is speaking out against those who encourage and demand that she (and other minorities) tread with caution when they speak. In fact, a common theme throughout many ethnic works is the “silence is golden” mantra. Many people, especially immigrants, are taught (and subsequently teach their own children) that what happens within the family and community should stay within the confines of the family and community. This request for silence leaves some feeling a close familial and cultural bond with their family (because they hold family secrets); while many others rebel and feel as though there voices are being suppressed maliciously. We see these “requests” for silence in Diana García’s When Living Was a Labor Camp and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. While these requests and/or orders do place limitations on a person and their interactions, I argue that many of particular requests for silence that we see in the works of García and Kingston are noble requests. The characters that suppress the voices of others are doing in an act of preservation of their culture and protection of their family and community. In this essay, I will highlight the suppressed voices and examine the reason behind these requests with the intention of softening the perspective of those who believe that the suppression of voice is merely a way to control another person.
The narrator in Kingston’s “No Name Woman” is a girl who is told by her mother “you must not tell anyone […] what I am about to tell you” (3). These words are repeated so often and with such passion that the narrator believes the
Gloria Anzaldúa, in her novel Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, proclaims that “I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence” (81). Anzaldúa is speaking out against those who encourage and demand that she (and other minorities) tread with caution when they speak. In fact, a common theme throughout many ethnic works is the “silence is golden” mantra. Many people, especially immigrants, are taught (and subsequently teach their own children) that what happens within the family and community should stay within the confines of the family and community. This request for silence leaves some feeling a close familial and cultural bond with their family (because they hold family secrets); while many others rebel and feel as though there voices are being suppressed maliciously. We see these “requests” for silence in Diana García’s When Living Was a Labor Camp and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. While these requests and/or orders do place limitations on a person and their interactions, I argue that many of particular requests for silence that we see in the works of García and Kingston are noble requests. The characters that suppress the voices of others are doing in an act of preservation of their culture and protection of their family and community. In this essay, I will highlight the suppressed voices and examine the reason behind these requests with the intention of softening the perspective of those who believe that the suppression of voice is merely a way to control another person.
The narrator in Kingston’s “No Name Woman” is a girl who is told by her mother “you must not tell anyone […] what I am about to tell you” (3). These words are repeated so often and with such passion that the narrator believes the
Cited: Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderland/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987 García, Diana. When Living Was A Labor Camp. Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 2000 Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. New York: Vintage International, 1975.