Maxine Hong Kingston grew up as a Chinese-American, displaying some of the values of her culture in her works. At the time, it was not unusual to grow up Chinese-American, but they would be the first generation raised with two very different cultures. In China, women often lacked many rights. They were forced into arranged marriages and ended up being housewives for future children. A sense of community was strong in China, and respect for your family was a virtue. In America, women had the right to vote, the right to marry who they would please, and the right to have or not have children. American families could be split up, or together, and children may not always get along with their parents. These two contrasting cultures and being raised
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Kingston mentions the word silent or silence many times throughout the poem, “…waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute” as well as mentions ghosts or spirits, “A child with no descent line would not soften her life but only trail after her, ghostlike, begging her to give it a purpose” (Pages 1576-1577). She made it known that she would not be silenced, and give the dead a memory. Silence is widely mentioned throughout the story, because of the expected silence and secrecy among the community. The story was an untold secret, which is why the theme of silence is so prevalent. Not only was the story secretive, but Kingston uses this theme of silence to display the silence Chinese women were undergoing. Chinese women were expected to be content by their husbands and how their life is, when in actuality they were not. Women were not to speak of their sadness because they had everything they needed. While ghosts in some Chinese cultures are believed in, I think that the ghosts could possibly have another meaning. Kingston was lucky to be growing up in America, where women could have more liberty than those in China. Kingston’s life could have gone so differently if she lived in China, and stories that her mother told her can haunt her, like a ghost, of a life that she could have lived. When many different cultures immigrated to America, they are leaving past cultural expectations behind; but there are ghosts that haunt them, like how their life would turn out if they were held to their past culture’s
Kingston mentions the word silent or silence many times throughout the poem, “…waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute” as well as mentions ghosts or spirits, “A child with no descent line would not soften her life but only trail after her, ghostlike, begging her to give it a purpose” (Pages 1576-1577). She made it known that she would not be silenced, and give the dead a memory. Silence is widely mentioned throughout the story, because of the expected silence and secrecy among the community. The story was an untold secret, which is why the theme of silence is so prevalent. Not only was the story secretive, but Kingston uses this theme of silence to display the silence Chinese women were undergoing. Chinese women were expected to be content by their husbands and how their life is, when in actuality they were not. Women were not to speak of their sadness because they had everything they needed. While ghosts in some Chinese cultures are believed in, I think that the ghosts could possibly have another meaning. Kingston was lucky to be growing up in America, where women could have more liberty than those in China. Kingston’s life could have gone so differently if she lived in China, and stories that her mother told her can haunt her, like a ghost, of a life that she could have lived. When many different cultures immigrated to America, they are leaving past cultural expectations behind; but there are ghosts that haunt them, like how their life would turn out if they were held to their past culture’s