No Name Woman Summary

To analyze a story, memoir, or anything written is to search for the facts, and differentiate from speculation and fiction. Facts being, concrete evidence that what the writer says or does is completely true. Speculation is when a guess is made as to what happened and on the other hand, fiction, is something that is undoubtedly made up. Maxine Hong Kingston, writer of “No Name Woman” takes the reader on a journey using these three components to decipher the story of her aunt. To analyze Kingston’s memoir thoroughly, her facts, her fiction and what she speculates about her aunt has to be broken down and studied. This memoir is complete with elaborate fiction and believable speculations that really shows how much critical thinking Kingston
Kingston’s mother remembers it like if it was a recent memory of hers stating that “The villagers broke in the front and back doors at the same time, even though we had not locked the doors against them. Their knives dripped with the blood of our animal.” The villagers were furious that she had betrayed the sacred oath of marriage and condemned her and her family at the same time. They killed the animals to leave the family of Kingston’s aunt with nothing only because they were related to
One speculation Kingston gives is when she writes “My aunt could not have been the lone romantic who gave up everything for sex” (pg.6). Kingston believes this to be a sound argument because as she also states right after, “Women in old china did not choose” (pg.6). To Kingston, this means that her aunt, like all Chinese women, were not married because they fell in love and they wanted to live happily ever after. They married because they were told to marry. Love wasn’t a factor, so that is why her aunt could not have thrown everything away for this