Patriarchal Effects on Immigrant Women

Patriarchal Effects on Immigrant Women: A Comparison of Amy Tan’s “The Moon Lady” and Maxine Hong Kingston’s “No Name Woman”

By Tristan Tyson

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Maren Clegg-Hyer, Department of English

Article Abstract:

The issues faced by immigrants in new countries vary and can be exacerbated by social factors relative to one’s respective parent country. In the instance of immigrant women, specifically those from China, these cultural factors can lead to an innumerable number of social obstacles. Instances of these obstacles are present in cross-cultural works such as “The Moon Lady” from Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club and “No Name Woman” from Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Warrior Woman. Cultural differences that are further strained from one generation to the next can cause resentment toward women from other women. This resentment creates a space where women are systematically silenced in a parent culture, and this practice is often carried over into the new culture via immigration. The silencing of women often leads to more unjust circumstances such as violent acts. With this combination of social and cultural factors, it is evident that Asian immigrant women will face identity issues and crises after immigrating or after being born to first-generation immigrant parents. The problems exacerbated by the patriarchy that these immigrant Chinese women encounter include women receiving harsh treatment from other women, violence against women being condoned, generational silencing of women’s voices, and instances of confusion that lead to identity crises.

For centuries, men have controlled and oppressed women through institutional patriarchy. The effects and traumas of being subjugated due to gender were especially brutal toward immigrant women. By leaving one instance of oppression and being submitted to another form of patriarchy, immigrant women encounter a variety of social obstacles. Instances of these obstacles are present in cross-cultural works such as Amy Tan’s “The Moon Lady” and Maxine Hong Kingston’s “No Name Woman.” The problems exacerbated by the patriarchy that immigrant women encounter include resentment from other women, silencing of women, violent acts, and instances of identity crisis, and these factors can particularly impact Asian women immigrating to the United States. In the early 20th century, the residents of China were arguably more traditional in their customs as compared to Americans. American families would see the decline of the American nuclear family by 1960 while concubines were still present in China. Women were subject to becoming concubines or being ‘second wives’ or even ‘third wives,’ who were of lower rank than the husband’s first wife. There are several traditions such as these that differ greatly from norms in the United States. When discussing Asian American literature, especially narratives concerning Chinese-American immigrants, Tan and Kingston are at the forefront of the conversation. Their works are considered landmarks for stories concerning Chinese women and their children who have immigrated to America. Scholars such as Laura E. S. Trombley and Andreia-Irina Suciu identify Kingston as a landmark author in this area. Trombley recognizes that Kingston and her works have created a trans-disciplinary path for teaching Asian American writings. She states, “[a]ll of Kingston’s books have successfully transgressed disciplinary boundaries (a phenomenon all but unimaginable just a few years ago) and are studied at the college level in anthropology, history, sociology, politics, women’s studies, and literature classes” (2). She explains that Kingston has created a space between fiction and nonfiction where real stories can be told while being filled with cultural embellishments.

Born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents, Tan was raised in San Francisco. Her novel, The Joy Luck Club, like Kingston’s work, was critically acclaimed and widely received as a look into the narrative of women who struggle with their cross-cultural identities. Matthew James Vechinski considers the popularity of The Joy Luck Club by non-academic audiences. He explains, “In these ways The Joy Luck Club replicates the nonfiction in Ladies’ Home Journal that largely focuses on personal narratives written by women dealing with and overcoming real-life uncertainty” (47). Co-authors John R. Maitino and David R. Peck both argue that looking further, Tan and Kingston have created works that function as comingof-age narratives. The authors present Tan and Kingston as a natural pair and state, “The Warrior Woman can be approached as a book about growing up, a kind of female bildungsroman or novel of development” (274). In addition to naming both Tan and Kingston as landmark Chinese-American literary figures, Helena Grice recognizes them as landmark authors on Chinese-American social issues. In Maxine Hong Kingston: World Contemporary Writers, she explains that Kingston’s work will “locate Kingston within two interconnected, specific cultural contexts: Chinese American history and politics; and the emergence of ethnic feminism in a post-civil rights era” (2). “The Moon Lady” and “No Name Woman” are seminal works of cross-cultural experiences. They tell the stories of immigrant women caught between two patriarchal societies. Kwok-Bun Chan’s work focuses on social and economic trends occurring in America and Asia. After noting that the lives of Asian Americans are getting better and that racism toward them has gradually decreased, he states, “However, the personal and psychological struggle in identifying places between two very different cultures has not eased, and to a certain degree it has even complicated and intensified” (100). Chan describes how immigrant Chinese women bear the brunt of culture shock while enduring oppression from two forms of patriarchy on top of racism.

In line with Chan, Jing He defines the symbolic imagery revolving around Ying-ying’s night after she falls off the boat. He explains the meaning behind family ties, nakedness, and cross-dressing and their relation to self-identification (308). The patriarchy creates resentment among women and cultural tensions cause discord among familial units. Yu Shi states there are “a number of constraints facing the[se] women everyday: material difficulty, racial-cultural marginalization, and ethnic patriarchal control” (13). Looking deeper, it is apparent that social oppression and strict gender roles in place for women in America and China create inequality, tension, and anger. These emotions can create a passive-aggressive attitude that simmers, or they can boil over into rage that creates devastation for women. This tension and fear of violence that resides in women is created by men but oftentimes can be taken out on other women. These cultural issues and gender frustration are seen in works by both Tan and Kingston. “The Moon Lady” is a chapter in Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club in which a young girl is navigating her childhood or remembering, later, as an immigrant woman, her place as a girl in China and the others around her as women in patriarch-centered families. Ying-ying is an inquisitive, observant, and thoughtful child. However, these may not be traits typically appreciated in girls of this time. After badgering her Amah, Ying-ying asks her a question boldly, and Amah cries, “Too many questions!” (Tan 69). A child interrogating an elder angers Amah. She tells Ying-ying that she does not need “to understand” and that she should “[j]ust behave, follow your mother’s example” (Tan 69). After scolding her, Amah informs Ying-ying of the correct way she should behave that evening and tells her not to be shameful. This intentional mention of shame is used to teach Ying-ying the way she is expected to act and behave accordingly. While criticism from an elder may be cross-culturally universal, it is uncommon for young children to ponder their own familial rank in relation to their siblings. This event of women placing social expectations on other women is also seen in Ying-ying’s mother.

Ying-ying is allowed to go outside during a family meal. She is told to play with her half-sisters. She treats her half-siblings as less than herself. This is due to the fact that these half-siblings are related to Ying-ying through their father, as the half-sisters are the children of concubines to Ying-ying’s father. Yingying’s mother is the ‘first wife’ to Ying-ying’s father, making her socially more powerful as she outranks his other wives. This results in the mistreatment of the half-sisters by Ying-ying. She makes them sit in the hot sun while she gets to sit in a shaded area, and she shares only small portions of her food with them and gives them the parts she does not want. After Ying-ying gets her nice clothes dirty, she is scolded not for the soiled garments but because she acted out of place as a female child. Her mother tells her, “A boy can run and chase dragonflies, because that is his nature . . . But a girl should stand still” (Tan 72). One can see that the mother-daughter bond is a strong one; however, it is strengthened by discipline rather than love. Amah herself has met inopportune circumstances that relate to her being a woman. After her husband died, Amah gave up being a mother to her son in order to join Ying-ying’s family as a servant, and she undertakes the job of being Ying-ying’s nursemaid. Her role is to be near the family but not a part of it; she functions as a luxury toward Ying-ying’s family. This mistreatment is evident through Ying-ying’s thoughts on Amah, “so I thought of Amah only as someone for my comfort, the way you might think of a fan in the summer or a heater in the winter, a blessing you appreciate and love only when it is no longer there” (Tan 73). The resentment of women by other women is seen again when the family is on a boat and Ying-ying has once again gotten her clothes dirty, this time with fish scales and chicken blood, and is received harshly by her Amah. Amah tells Yingying, “[y]our mother, now she will be glad to wash her hands of you” (Tan 77). Ying-ying fears Amah’s threat that Ying-ying’s mother will banish them to the far away city of Kunming. While Ying-ying’s mother most likely would not banish her, she does not have to deal with resentment that brings ostracization and

embarrassment, such as characters in Kingston’s “No Name Woman.” While Ying-ying recalls her childhood in China, she is also reliving the experiences she encountered. She gives readers a look at her past, and through this lens, one can see first-hand instances of oppression under patriarchy. Instances of patriarchy in a parent culture are seen through the eyes of the late aunt in Kingston’s “No Name Woman.” The Speaker in “No Name Woman” and Ying-ying at the beginning of “The Moon Lady” are narrating from the present, and thus one can see their transition to a new culture with a perspective coming from the past parent culture. Strong cultural traditions are also seen in Kingston’s The Warrior Woman. Kingston, the author of The Warrior Woman, starts off the novel’s chapter entitled “No Name Woman” with suicide and secrets. The Speaker who narrates “No Name Woman” is arguably Kingston herself. In Maxine Hong Kingston: World Contemporary Writers, Helena Grice points out that, “Kingston juxtaposes and interweaves her adolescent perspective with a retrospective adult commentary upon her experiences” (21). The Speaker is being told a story about her deceased aunt, whom the Speaker knew nothing about, who died in China. The Speaker’s mother tells her that her late aunt, after having become pregnant illicitly, jumped into a well and drowned. Unknown to the Speaker, her aunt’s actions caused embarrassment for her whole family which in turn ostracized not only the aunt but her relatives as well. This ostracization in turn caused resentment and discord in her own home. The Speaker is told the family acts as if there were only sons born to that generation and that she “must not tell anyone” (Kingston 3). Being secretive is a minor issue; however, being treated poorly can lead to the harsh possibility of one committing suicide due to patriarchal mistreatment. The resentment toward the unnamed aunt grows as the aunt’s pregnancy continues. She goes nameless because there is so much shame that is carried with her story. Laura Trombley states that after the suicide of the Speaker’s aunt, “the family killed her name” (80). The Speaker

is told that her father no longer acknowledges his sister: “Don’t let your father know that I told you. He denies her” (Kingston 5). Her late aunt is not even a topic up for discussion: “If I want to learn what clothes my aunt wore, whether flashy or ordinary I would have to begin, ‘Remember father’s drowned-in-the-well sister?’ I cannot ask that. My mother has told me once and for all the useful parts” (Kingston 6). This places a silencing of curiosity over the Speaker. The Speaker is also told about a tradition where outcasts are present with their family but shamefully sat at another table: “In a commensal tradition, where food is precious, the powerful older people made wrongdoers eat alone. Instead of letting them start separate new lives like the Japanese, who could become samurais and geishas, the Chinese family . . . hung onto the offenders and fed them leftovers” (Kingston 7). This removal of the late aunt from the family tree and chosen ignorance of her is, in a way, a method of resenting her and keeping her quiet forever for her actions that do not align with the wishes of her patriarchal society. Additionally, the silencing of the late aunt’s story is carried into the next generation by the mother reinforcing this practice on the Speaker. The silencing of Ying-ying’s voice is less dramatic and has more to do with the fact that she is a young child. While she is not exactly disobedient and is more curious than anything, she must learn early on how to act and behave as a young woman. At the beginning of “No Name Woman,” Ying-ying is prefacing her childhood story with a note on her own nature. She explains, “[f]or all these years I kept my mouth closed so selfish desires would not fall out. And because I remained quiet for so long now my daughter does not hear me . . . all these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me” (Tan 67). Ying-ying has had experiences with two different patriarchal societies. Even by immigrating to a new country, she was not able to escape being cast into the lesser role of being a good wife and mother. The practice of women being quiet and subservient to their husbands is seen in both Chinese and American patriarchal standards. Ying-ying is able to reflect

back on her life and see the ways in which she was oppressed and how it changed how she is as a person. She wishes she could tell her daughter that, “[w]e are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others” (Tan 67). Her explanation as to how she was changed by the patriarchy is eloquent but pained, “I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water” (Tan 67). While an exact amount of oppression cannot be measured, not being able to escape from an oppressive institution is draining and weathers down one’s spirit. She goes on to hope this does not happen to her daughter by her “important husband.” Ying-ying’s aforementioned shadow is a symbol of her spirit. It is quiet and intangible but still a part of her. In a way, it is all of the parts of Ying-ying that are made to be othered, her curiosity, liveliness, and bold nature. After Amah scolds her, she is indeed fearful of the threat of exile. She then falls off her family’s rented boat into the water. She is frightened when “a dark shape brushed by me and I knew it was one of the Five Evils, a swimming snake. It wrapped around me and squeezed my body like a sponge, then tossed me into the choking air . . .” (Tan 78). This dark figure, the swimming snake, is a reference to how Yingying feels oppressed by the women around her who act as a conduit for her patriarchal society. While she gasps for air after climbing onto a nearby boat, she encounters more shadows that are fishermen trying to get her out of the water. In this instance, Ying-ying is offered help when she fears for her life, an opportunity not awarded to the late aunt. As for Ying-ying, she has brought her fears and her gender role from the parent culture. In America, Ying-ying’s daughter receives her mother’s worries about her own marriage. As Ying-ying reflects on how the old social norms affected her, she compares herself to a stone that has been weathered down in the new culture of America (Kingston 67). From the parent culture, China, patriarchal norms follow both the Speaker and Ying-ying to America and impact their lives. In the new culture, both the

Speaker and Ying-ying view events in their lives from looking at past experiences that have affected them. The silencing of the late aunt, while it is brought to America by her niece, is never ended, just carried along. For the Speaker, she is still unable to ask her family about her aunt, and she does not know how her aunt dressed (Kingston 6). The lasting individual effects of patriarchy on the Speaker has eliminated any space where the Speaker could ask about her aunt. Thus, an instance of double silencing occurs. Silencing occurs most evidently in “No Name Woman” at the “outcast” table. At this table “where all the family members came nearest one another, no one could talk, not the outcasts . . . every word that falls from the mouth is a coin lost. Silently they gave and accepted food with both hands” (Kingston 11). While both men and women could become hostage outcasts, this rule of silence especially applied to women. When the late aunt is asked who impregnated her, she does not speak. Instead of dishonoring another person, she instead “kept the man’s name to herself throughout her labor and dying; she did not accuse him that he be punished with her. To save her inseminator’s name she gave silent birth” (Kingston 11). For fear of further punishment or shaming, unknowing of her looming death, she stays silent. This silence is, of course, a response to her patriarchal society. To speak up was to be too bold, for a woman to bear a child when her husband had been away for years was treacherous, and to accuse another man would be heresy. This silencing present in “No Name Woman” highlights a double standard on sexual conduct. For women, “adultery is extravagance” (Kingston 6). To cheat on one’s husband was not an option, but an indulgence. The Speaker confides that her aunt had not chosen to commit adultery but that, “some man had commanded her to live with him and be his secret evil” (Kingston 6). He did not pay for his crimes while the late aunt suffered in silence. The storytelling by the Speaker’s mother serves two purposes. The first is continued silencing. Before her death, the late aunt is told that she is a “[g]host! Dead ghost! Ghost! You’ve

never been born” (Kingston 14). Her life and her words hold no weight. The Speaker admits “but there is more to the silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have” (Kingston 16). The generation after the Speaker will most likely not know of their great-aunt. By choosing to forget her, they have removed her from the family. Now she will be one of many women who are silenced by men, their power, and the women who participate in suppressing other women. The late aunt is now eternally abject as she “remains forever hungry. Goods are not distributed evenly among the dead” (Kingston 16). In addition, the purpose of telling the late aunt’s story is to serve as a warning to the Speaker. She has been made aware of what is expected and appropriate for women, as well as informed of the potential consequences. By not knowing her name or asking questions about her aunt, she prolongs the silence surrounding her and also reminds herself what it means to be a woman born into a Chinese family. Even though the Speaker now lives in America, she has been told, by another woman, her family history which carries patriarchal oppressive tones. Both Ying-ying and the late aunt experienced the loss of their voice, the silencing of who they are as people. While Yingying’s voice is drowned out by female relatives and water, the late aunt is suffering in silence from the actions of an adulterer and the shame brought onto her family by the neighboring villagers. While Ying-ying learns her place in society from a young age, the late aunt’s life is ended by not following patriarchal rules. Ying-ying arguably has an easier life than the late aunt from what readers see in the novels. Ying-ying does not encounter the type of violence as experienced by the late aunt. This may be due to the fact that Ying-ying’s family appears to be wealthier while the late aunt and her kin grew up in a rural village. Many of the village families depended on their male family members working abroad and sending money home. This combination of having to work hard to live and being isolated from other communities created a culture where the villagers all knew one another and even knew each family’s background from studying birth charts. This culture,

combined with overbearing patriarchal tendencies, caused a custom of heavily relying on traditional customs such as the dowry, the subservience of wives, and women remaining entirely committed to their husbands even if they were to take more wives. These customs also create dark social mores. When a famine, winter, and carelessness are combined with an oppressive culture, they create an environment for violent acts. Violent acts are a more extreme effect of patriarchal control than are present in traditional Chinese customs, and they follow Chinese women even as they immigrate. Violence is what took the late aunt’s life. John Maitino provides insight on the patriarchy’s effect in feminist works as the “feminist critiques of patriarchal abuses of women—the severely restrictive rules imposed on women, social evils such as rape, foot binding, ostracism, and murderous violence—are implicit in these stories” (276). As aforementioned, while her husband was away for work, the late aunt became pregnant. The Speaker’s mother explains that it was long after their husbands departed to work and that, “[w]e did not discuss it. In early summer, she was ready to have the child, long after the time when it could have been possible” (Kingston 3). Unfortunately, the late aunt lived in a small farming village, so there were no strangers and gossip abounded. While the Speaker’s mother began counting the days of pregnancy so did their neighbors: “The village had also been counting. On the night the baby was to be born the villagers raided our house . . . the people with long hair wore it over their faces” (Kingston 4). The fear of an angry mob is not the only thing the late aunt’s family had to fear. The mob soon became violent: “At first they threw mud and rocks at the house. Then they threw eggs and began slaughtering our stock. We could hear the animals scream their deaths” (Kingston 4). The time in which the late aunt became pregnant was during a cold winter while the village was simultaneously going through a famine. The villagers saw her actions as nonessential indulgence. Having an illegitimate child during those tough times was a luxury neither the family nor the village could afford.

As the villagers came into the house, the family stood together, huddled, in the hallway. The villagers, with their knives dripping the blood of livestock, wrecked the home. They made a point of destroying the late aunt’s room and the objects in it: “They ripped up her clothes and shoes and broke her combs, grinding them underfoot. They tore her work from the loom” (Kingston 4). The villagers’ anger is what led to their violence. The villagers acted in response to the late aunt’s actions. When she became pregnant via adultery, she broke the rules that govern their village. Going against one’s husband is one matter, bringing shame to one’s family is another. What actually drives the villagers to violence is what they deem to be overindulgence during a trying time in their village. They see the unborn child as a careless act that breaks the laws their society is centered around. If the late aunt can break these rules, any woman can do as she pleases. The villagers believe what they are doing is right. The Speaker ponders over this: “If my aunt had betrayed the family at a time of large grain yields and peace, when many boys were born, and wings were being built on many houses, perhaps she might have escaped such severe punishment” (Kingston 13). By attacking the adulteress, the villagers are sending a message. This act signals that the late aunt, a woman, has gone against what is commonly accepted behavior. By punishing her, they proclaim their intolerance of any deviant behavior. After the angry villagers kill the family’s livestock and wreck their home, they take food, clothes, and items that are not broken and leave. As the mob disappears, the family breaks their silence. The family goes from shocked to enraged. The family shouts, “Aiaa, we’re going to die. Death is coming. Death is coming. Look what you’ve done. You’ve killed us” (Kingston 14). They are not angry at the mob but at the late aunt for going against the system. The Speaker explains, “[a] family must be whole, faithfully keeping the descent line by having sons to feed the old and the dead, who in turn look after the family” (Kingston 13). By breaking this unspoken but understood rule,

the late aunt has broken tradition. Here, violence is carried out by a group instead of a single male. One can argue that due to the accepted oppression of women, violent acts such as this are not uncommon. In this instance, the villagers are acting as the governing body. In many feminist works, a powerful man or men in places of authority usually carry out the sentencing of the law. After the mob’s attack, the late aunt runs out into the fields. As she lays on the ground, she feels the pains of childbirth. Even though she has not been physically harmed, the traumatic experience has broken her. “‘They’ve hurt me too much,’ She thought. ‘This is gall, and it will kill me’” (Kingston 14). This is due to her being shunned and her knowledge that her baby, a girl child, will not be accepted into her society. To ask her family to raise the child would be dishonorable, and the child would likely live as an outcast. Identifying as female in a male-centered society can place constraints on one’s identity. Kwok-Bun Chan believes that “[c] hildhood and adolescents play a crucial role in the process of identity formation. Experiences and education during this period shape a person’s worldview and determine a possible future self” (101). Moving from one highly traditional, patriarchal society to a new land with its own culture but also possessing its own form of patriarchy can be a jarring cross-cultural experience. Ying-ying, while contemplating on the wonders, fears, and loneliness she has experienced before and after her move, states that while dwelling on these things, she remembers “[h]ow [she] lost herself” (Tan 83). Women on both sides of immigration face these cultural identity issues. In both “The Moon Lady” and “No Name Woman” one can see women being snagged on the sharp edges of cross-cultural experiences that lead to confusion of one’s true nature and loss of identity. In “The Moon Lady,” the night of the Moon Festival is a night of change for Ying-ying. Jing He describes the symbolic imagery revolving around Ying-ying’s night after she falls off the boat: “The illusions of Ying-ying about the Moon Lady in Tan’s The Joy Luck Club also reveal the harsh fact of women’s

rootless status in a world with all its rules prescribed by men” (308). Ying-ying “is soon rescued by a fishnet, but is mistaken by the fisherman as a bigger girl without a family. Wandering among the crowd of strangers by the riverside, Ying-ying suffers from her identity confusion: without her fine clothes and family’s good fortune, she is indeed no different than a beggar girl” (He 308). Without her family to vouch for her, Ying-ying is no different than any other girl-child. Furthermore, she was wearing underclothes when she fell into the lake, so she appears to be a peasant or “beggar girl” (Tan 79). No one is quick to help Ying-ying, as she does not have her expensive dress clothes on, and she is eventually dumped back at the shore. Jing He continues, “[i]t is at that desperate moment that Ying-ying is attracted by an ongoing shadow show about the moon lady” (He 308). The Moon Lady is lamenting over her exile to the moon for disobeying her husband. She is now lost and alone forever, and Ying-ying, also in a moment of desperation, “cries in deep sorrow, feeling empathetic for the same identity crisis she’s going through” (He 308). Ying-ying runs backstage to see the celestial Moon Lady only to find “a face so tired that she wearily pulled off her hair, her long gown fell from her shoulders. And as the secret wish fell from [Ying-ying’s] lips, the Moon Lady looked at [her] and became a man” (Tan 82). Jing He explains the nature of gender symbolized here: “the fact that the Moon Lady is acted by a man points to the reality that the femininity of women is ultimately determined by patriarchal ideology, while the ugliness of the Moon Lady’s face reveals the ugliness of women’s victimization” (He 309). After this event, Ying-ying is lost but also loses herself. Looking to Ying-ying’s future, which is actually the beginning of “The Moon Lady,” one can see that it took years for Ying-ying to solve her identity confusion. Ying-ying states some of her own confusion stems from the fact that she “moved so secretly”; shadow-like, she now has trouble finding herself. Even after moving to America, Ying-ying, now an adult, is still unsure of who she is. This fear also grows to make her worry

about her daughter. Jing He elaborates that “[f]or Ying-ying, the night of the moon festival is a night of change, an epiphany in her life. Finding out the cruel truth behind the illusion of the Moon Lady, the narrator Ying-ying in her late years realizes she has long lost herself, and her secret wish ‘to be found’ could not be fulfilled by anyone but herself” (He 309). That night, Yingying underwent a change in her identity that had long-lasting effects. The event triggered a process of losing her identity that followed her as she immigrated. The epiphany of who she is was only regained with hindsight years later. As Ying-ying reflects that even though her family did locate her later that night, she never believed that they “found the same girl” (Tan 82). Identity confusion is not so easy to sift through for the Speaker in “No Name Woman,” even with the hindsight of hearing her Aunt’s tale. Andrea Suciu speaks on the relevance of the Speaker being a Chinese-American woman: “These stories function as an interface between mother and daughter, between Chinese heritage and American upbringing” (7). Pondering over the story of the Speaker’s late aunt still haunts her. She reflects, “[m]y aunt still haunts me—her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote pages of paper to her” (Kingston 16). She even has an interesting take on the punishment her aunt was dealt: “The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family’s deliberately forgetting her,” as by this act of violence, her aunt and her story has been both erased and silenced (Kingston 16). Violence, or even the fear of it, can also cause issues with one’s own identity. Struggling with one’s identity is, in the end, what caused the late aunt to commit suicide. She broke unspoken rules and transgressed on cultural mores that affect every aspect of her life. The mob’s attack was the beginning of becoming an outcast, but her violation against her family is what solidified her fate. She is now alone with child, without family or her husband. She is only one of many women who were unable to go on with their lives. By losing her reputation, she loses who she is and her own life.

The women in “The Moon Lady” and “No Name Woman” are stand-ins for all women under patriarchal suppression. They symbolize the women who have to deal with resentment, fear, violence, and identity crisis. Oppression due to one’s gender subjects one to internalized hate that can manifest as resentment toward other women, such as the treatment of Ying-ying by Amah or the late aunt by her community. The inequality present in patriarchies also leads to victimization, in which women often have to suffer in silence. Silence is a lesser evil compared to the suffering of those subjected to violent acts that were especially inflicted on the late aunt. The violence caused by patriarchy and the multiple other implications brought on by cross-cultural experiences can cause confusion. The confusion of not knowing where one belongs creates a feeling of perplexity about the self. This creates an identity crisis fueled by a variety of social factors. These encounters are not fixed to one culture, and they follow individuals and are planted in new generations in their new cultures. There is no doubt that many immigrant women and their daughters experience several or all of these emotions and circumstances. The oppression of Chinese immigrant women can carry on for generations, perhaps only counteracted by voicing in quiet protest the double jeopardy faced by such women, as evident in Tan’s and Kingston’s works.

Works Cited

Chan, Kwok-Bun. East-west Identities: Globalization, Localization, and Hybridization, Brill, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ valdosta/detail.action?docID=468210. Grice, Helena. Maxine Hong Kingston: Maxine Hong Kingston, Manchester University Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, Grice, Helena. Negotiating Identities: An Introduction to Asian American Women’s Writing. Manchester University Press, 2002. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=mzh&AN=2 002534273&site=eds-live&scope=site. He, Jing. “Through the Looking Glass: Female Identity Rediscovery in Chen Ran’s and Amy Tan’s Fictions.” Intercultural Communication Studies, vol. 25, no. 3, Dec. 2016, pp. 306–319.EBSCOhost,search.ebscohost. com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=uf h&AN=122621345&site=eds-live&scope=site. Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts. First ed., New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1976. Maitino, John R. Teaching American Ethnic Literatures: Nineteen Essays. Vol. 1st ed, University of New Mexico Press, 1996. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN= 22681&site=ehost-live. Peck, David R. Teaching American Ethnic Literatures: Nineteen Essays. Vol. 1st ed, University of New Mexico Press, 1996. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?di rect=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=22681& site=ehost-live.

Shi, Yu. “Chinese Immigrant Women Workers’ Mediated Negotiations with Constraints on Their Cultural Identities.” Feminist Media Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 143–161. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14680770801980539. Suciu, Andreia-Irina. “Voices and Voicing in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior.” Americana: E-Journal of American Studies in Hungary, vol. 10, no. 1, 2014. EBSCOhost, direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=mzh &AN=2014306714&site=ehost-live. Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1989. Trombley, Laura E. Critical Essays on Maxine Hong Kingston. New York: London: G.K. Prentice Hall International, 1998. Print. Critical Essays on American Literature. Vechinski, Matthew. “Staging the Reception of American Ethnic Authors in Women’s Popular Magazines: Encountering Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club Stories in Seventeen and Ladies’ Home Journal.” Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History, vol. 7, no. 1, 2015, p. 45. EBSCOhost, doi:10.5325/reception.7.1.0045.

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