JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. We know that Kingston's female relatives are of particular interest in this book. Kingston's dedication of the fourth chapter to the story of her aunt Moon Orchid's arrival in the United States is significant. But what do we make of Moon Orchid? We might immediately think that she's kind of wimpy. Her husband has left her in China and has now taken a new wife in the United States.
When Moon Orchid arrives in America, she doesn't even want to confront her husband, not wanting to interfere with his life even though he pretty much wrote her out of his. We might relate to Brave Orchid's insistence that Moon Orchid stand up for herself and say something to her husband. What is going on? Why doesn't she say or do something? We might get annoyed because Kingston has trained us to question the expected role of wife for Chinese women the No Name aunt, Fa Mu Lan, for example.
For thirty years, Moon Orchid had received money from her husband. She never told him that she wanted to move Brave Orchid instructed her sister on what to do when she confronted her husband.
Moon Orchid wondered what to do if her husband did not remember her. Brave Orchid instructed her She insisted that Moon Orchid make life unbearable for the second wife, if necessary.
Moon Orchid countered that she would Brave Orchid walked Moon Orchid and her niece to the laundry via Chinatown, pointing out things along the way. When they got to the laundry, Brave Orchid assigned Moon Orchid a task to perform, though all of the jobs seemed too difficult and Brave Orchid She introduced Moon Orchid to her friends and told them that her sister had come back to reclaim her Moon Orchid later started visiting the laundry late in the afternoons when the towels were dry, and Orchid assigned the task of driving to her eldest son.
During the drive, Brave Orchid began to tell the Perhaps he Brave Orchid had tried to Moon Orchid was too nervous to go in. Brave Orchid decided to scout the building and come When Moon Orchid claimed to be too scared to go into his office and announce herself, Brave Orchid Brave Orchid was outraged that he did not recognize his wife.
Brave Orchid made up Several months went by with no letters from Moon Orchid. Orchid decided that her sister should return north to live with her. Finally, Brave Orchid realized that the situation Brave Orchid gave up when Moon Orchid started badmouthing her children. She wondered if Moon Orchid had already left her body and She did not believe that she could handle it any better than Moon Orchid did.
Kingston thinks that his story Kingston's empowering women by creating individualized voices for them also extends to her own mother. Because Brave Orchid, despite her many years in America, does not speak English, she is effectively voiceless in her new world. Through Kingston, however, Brave Orchid's achievements are vocalized and recorded, as are all of the women's lives in The Woman Warrior.
Kingston's memoir reveals Brave Orchid's sacrifices and lifts her out of the nameless Chinese crowd living in America. Ironically, however, this process of voicing women's experiences threatens Kingston's own self-esteem, especially in her relationship with her mother. For example, when a delivery boy mistakenly delivers pharmaceutical drugs to the family's laundry business, Brave Orchid is livid: Certainly, she thinks, the drugstore purposefully delivered the drugs to bring bad luck on her family.
Brave Orchid forces Kingston, as the oldest child, to demand "reparation candy" from the druggist, a chore that Kingston finds embarrassing. They want to fix up your tongue to speak for them. Unfortunately, the personal cost of remaining silent, of not speaking "chingchong ugly" Chinese, is great, as Kingston's tale of Moon Orchid, her aunt, reveals. Moon Orchid's tragic story in "At Western Palace" depicts a woman, deserted by her husband, who has so completely internalized the patriarchal view that women should always remain silent and never question male authority that she literally is silenced to death.
The episode in which Moon Orchid reluctantly confronts her Americanized husband demonstrates how essentially voiceless a Chinese woman is who lives in a traditionally patriarchal society. Facing her husband after decades apart, Moon Orchid is unable to voice her years of rage and grief: "But all she did was open and shut her mouth without any words coming out. You can't talk to them. You can barely talk to me. Ironically, even in the madness to which Moon Orchid succumbs after surviving her husband's emotional abuse, she is unable to talk.
In the memoir's last chapter, "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe," Kingston relates her own search for a personal, individualized voice.
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