Summary:
Reviews the autobiography No Name Woman, by Maxine Kingston. Examines the issue of community use of moral or social codes to control citizen behavior. Discusses the community control in a traditional Chinese community.
Each community often develops a system of control to maintain social order. Some communities instill this order by legal codes, and other communities use moral or social codes to keep their communities in check. In the autobiographical essay "No Name Woman," by Maxine Kingston, Kingston's aunt disrupts her tight knit community by having an illegitimate child as a result of an affair. Her traditional Chinese community ran by superstition finds it necessary to punish her and brand her a nameless face to ensure the village's stability. Any means of unsettling this stability would disrupt the social order and threaten the community, and would not be tolerated. The village uses fear of shame and the community's strong presence in one another's lives, as means to control their tight knit community.
Kingston opens her essay.....
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