No Name Woman: 2 Quotes

Our class started reading The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. From the first chapter, No Name Woman, we were asked to choose 2 quotes to analyze.

"Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese?" (page 5)

This quote is somewhat different from the rest of the chapter. It describes her personal feelings rather than just random thoughts and ideas. Here she describes how being 'Chinese-American' makes it hard to identify yourself. She tries to categorize all the experiences and aspects of her life that make up who she is into her American part and the Chinese part. What's strange is that in the quote, she begins to describe all these things that look to be part of her Chinese side, but at the end it says: "How do you separate... , from what is Chinese?" implying that those are the parts of her that are 'American'. This might have been written this way to further exaggerate how everything she had was mixed up in the Chinese-American girl she was.

"The work of preservation demands that the feelings playing about in one's guts not to be turned into action. Just watch their passing like cherry blossoms." (page 8)

"The work of preservation" refers to her aunt's or any woman’s duty to be reserved and loyal and "demands that the feelings playing about in one's guts not to be turned into action" simply means that they should not act on impulse or any emotions in general. In other words, the women in China at that time were expected to be self contained, prim, and aloof; and were expected to keep opinions and emotions to themselves; "watch their passing like cherry blossoms." The simile accompanying this thought hints depression. Cherry blossoms are thought to be beautiful in Asian culture and the passing of something that wonderful, like a feeling not let out, sounds pretty remorseful.