Struggles of Being Chinese-American

          The short story, No Name Woman, by Maxine Hong Kingston, struck a certain emotional chord within me. Through this story Kingston demonstrates the struggles of being a Chinese-American. Myself being half Japanese and half American, I have felt the pressures and difficulties of trying to uphold and live by the traditional East Asian values and way of life, while at the same time trying to fit into American society. I think that the story told by the narrator’s mother was utilized as a method to maintain the upholding of Chinese tradition. More importantly, the story essentially freaked the hell out of the narrator for what could possibly happen to her if she acts as a rebel to her family traditions as her forgotten aunt had, thus embracing American way of life more than her traditional way of life.

            In the story the narrator describes how attraction was always something that put her in a rut. She “hexed” herself, in the sense that she followed the Chinese tradition of romance and “she tried to turn myself [herself] American-feminine” (10), but had to put the back burner on her attractions. I can relate to this kind of feeling of entrapment because while I did live in a split cultured family with roughly half Japanese ideals and half American ideals, the conservatism and respect that is so closely associated with Japanese culture took a majority grip on my identity. This resulted in me being a rather shy kid, but it’s not like I was oblivious to how I could be more of an extrovert, and thus, choose to put myself out there in terms of attraction and romance. It was just the fact that how I was raised determined how I interacted in those situations, many similar to that which the narrator describes in this story.

            Acting in a rebellious manner is usually always a no-no in Asian cultures like the Chinese and Japanese. The mother’s story was clearly a warning for what happens when one rebels, especially when the rebel is a young woman, who lacks the same rights and privileges as woman do here in the U.S. While the narrator did mention how it was hard for her to break away from her family traditions, or ‘rebel’, in terms of having to comb her hair into an extremely tight bob, or the omnipresence of dishonoring her family, the fact that she is writing about something that was to be never spoken about is a testament that narrator is breaking away and ‘rebelling’. Thus, this story is one that describes the fine line that the narrator must follow, living in the external society that is America, while living in the unforgiving internal society that is her Chinese family.