Sins and Ghosts: The Forbidden Strories of Maxine Hong Kingston's "No Name Woman" and
Both Maxine Hong Kingston’s “No Name Woman” and Toni Morrison’s Beloved use story to give a voice to the silenced and forgotten “needy dead” (Beloved XIX). In these narratives, both Sethe and Kingston’s aunt feel that the reality of their futures is so bleak that they must commit the unimaginable act of killing their infant daughters. Kingston’s aunt throws herself and her baby, “probably a girl,” into the family well (“No Name Woman” 8). And Sethe slits her infant daughter’s neck, intending to kill her other children and herself as well. Sethe, as a survivor of the horrors of slavery, and Maxine Hong Kingston, as a living family member of the unnamed woman, are haunted by the spirits of the hungry, neglected, restless, angry dead who can never truly be forgotten. Kingston writes “No Name Woman” as an offering to her aunt’s spirit: “I alone devote pages of paper to her” (9). In her unconventional and beautiful article “The Unspeakable Stories of ‘Shoah’ and ‘Beloved,’” Lisa Garbus writes:
On the dedication page before she even begins her story, Morrison writes, ‘Sixty Million and more.’ She does not write ‘To the sixty million and more’ or ‘for’ them, because her book is not a story given to them; it is their story given to us. The words: ‘Sixty Million and more’ can exist only on the periphery of the text, because the text itself is inhabited by the absence of those lives. (58)
Though the circumstances in the “unspeakable,” forbidden stories of Maxine Hong Kingston's “No Name Woman” and Toni Morrison's Beloved are vastly different, both Kingston and Morrison must contend with the issues of honoring the ghosts of those who have been systematically erased from the memories of their respective societies. As Garber writes, “[Authors], as well as audience members and readers, accompany the storytellers and become witnesses for those whose stories are unreachable” (63).
Kingston’s “No Name Woman” begins: “You must not tell anyone what I am about to tell you” (1). The irony of such a beginning emphasizes the forbidden nature of “No Name Woman.” Kingston’s mother betrays her husband’s trust and violates the codes of silence dictated by her culture because she believes that it is necessary for the story of the unmentionable aunt to be heard by her daughter. Kingston’s mother claims that she reveals this story because Kingston “[had] started to menstruate” and that “what happened to her [aunt] could happen to [Kingston]” (2). While this explanation perhaps seems reasonable on the surface, it does not sufficiently account for such an act of treachery. After all, it is not logical to betray the codes of one’s culture in order to convince another person not to betray the codes of one’s culture. The inconsistency in her mother’s line of reasoning directs the Kingston and the reader to consider her mother’s true motivations for relaying this forbidden story.
Throughout the tale of the nameless aunt, Kingston’s mother offers subtle challenges of her village’s response to her sister-in-laws adultery. The villagers “wore white masks” in order to hide their faces, “took sugar and oranges to bless themselves,” “cut pieces from dead animals,” and “took bowls that were not broken and clothes that were not torn” (1-2). Kingston’s mother’s subtle critiques of her village’s treatment of her sister-in-law give Kingston permission to explore her aunt’s motivations for her actions. Despite her mother’s approval (albeit approval given indirectly and, perhaps, unconsciously), Kingston struggles with how to properly atone for the punishment of silence inflicted on her aunt. She writes, “My aunt haunts me—her ghost drawn to me because now, after fifty years of neglect, I alone devote page of paper to her…I do not think she always means me well. I am telling on her” (9). Though Kingston write’s “No Name Women” as a sacrifice to her dead aunt, she recognizes that her “aunt remains forever hungry” because “[g]oods are not distributed evenly among the dead” (9). There can never really be any peace for Kingston’s nameless aunt despite Kingston’s efforts to atone for her participation in her family’s punishment. In some sense, writing “No Name Woman” as a sacrifice of atonement is a futile cause in the end. What has been done cannot be undone. It seems Kingston writes “No Name Woman” as a way to heal her own wounds. Stories are for the living.
To deny one’s ancestors is to deny a part of one’s own self. Certainly the punishment of silence is not only a punishment of the person who broke the moral law; it is also a punishment of her community for its involvement in her actions. Denying “no name woman’s” existence is denying a piece of her family’s identity. Kingston’s mother warns Kingston, “You wouldn’t like to be forgotten as if you had never been born” (2). By telling Kingston the story of her unnamed aunt, Kingston’s mother proves that she has not forgotten her sister-in-law. Kingston’s aunt is never truly forgotten by those who knew her, lived with her, loved her. Kingston says,
The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family’s deliberate forgetting her. Her betrayal so maddened them, they saw to it that she would suffer forever, even after death. Always hungry, always needing, she would have to beg food from other ghosts, snatch and steal it from those whose living descendants give them gifts. (9)
Could Kingston’s family ever have imagined the kind of suffering and desperate hunger they would inflict on themselves by attempting to forget one of their own? Perhaps what he mother really means is: My daughter, please do not damage the bond between us or our community like your aunt, who we can never forget, no matter how hard we try. Do not force us, do not force me, to live as though we never knew you, or lived with you, or loved you. Such a punishment would be unbearable. That kind of pain never dies. Kingston, like her mother, is restless. Kingston writes “No Name Woman” as a way to shed the heaviness of silence.
Toni Morrison, like Kingston, writes Beloved as a means of giving a voice to a silenced people. Morrison and Kingston must develop the memories of their people in order to discover their place within the greater narrative. Unlike no name woman, Sethe is not successful in her attempt to commit suicide. She must continue to live in the world that she found so deplorable that she could not imagine allowing her children to continue experiencing it. As a survivor of indescribable hate, Sethe must learn to live in her reality. Beloved is the moment by moment account of the process of Sethe’s emotional trauma. In the beginning of the novel, Sethe says, “[I]f she’d only come, I could make it clear to her” (5). Sethe yearns to explain to Beloved why she felt that she had no better option than to kill her. Sethe believes that if she has the opportunity to explain that her actions were done out of love that she will be able to move forward with her life.
Sethe’s existence consists of a delicate balance between longing to reveal the truth of her experiences and her desire to forget. When Sethe is finally able to tell her story she experiences mixed feelings. The narrator writes:
When she’s telling Beloved stories, Sethe thinks, ‘[Storytelling] amazed Sethe (as much as it pleased Beloved) because every mention of her past life hurt. Everything in it was painful or lost. She and Baby Suggs had agreed without saying that it was unspeakable; to Denver’s inquiries Sethe gave short replies or rambling incomplete reveries. Even with Paul D, who had shared some of it and to who she could talk with at least a measure of calm, the hurt was always there—like a tender place in the corner of her mouth that the bit left. (69)
Mentioning “the bit” in this passage adds to the audience’s understanding of how difficult it is for Sethe to share her story. She can still feel the pain of the bit that silenced her when she was a slave. Sethe is so emotionally traumatized that telling her story is unbearable, even with those that she loves like Baby Suggs, Denver, and Paul D. It is important to note that even though Baby Suggs, an authority figure, agrees that the past is painful, that Sethe’s stories are not “unspeakable.” It is important for Sethe to share her stories though it is painful. The narrator goes on to say, “But, as she began telling about the earrings, she found herself wanting to, like it” (69). As she reveals more about herself, Sethe finds storytelling to be cathartic, though painful to be sure.
There comes a time when Sethe’s giving of herself through storytelling becomes damaging. The narrator explains, “Sethe was trying to make up for the handsaw; Beloved was making her pay for it. But there would never be an end…” (295). As mentioned, from the very beginning of the novel Sethe desires to tell her story so that Beloved can understand. Sethe does not want to share her story because she herself wants to understand her own trauma in order to move forward. Morrison shows the audience that Sethe’s attempts to share her story for Beloved’s sake are unsuccessful, and even damaging. What has been done cannot be undone. As Sethe becomes increasingly attached to Beloved, as she increasingly pours herself into the past, she starts to fade away both physically and emotionally. Beloved’s hunger for justice, her hunger for resolution, her hunger for the life she was denied will never be fulfilled. In order to heal, Sethe must tell her stories as a way to connect with the living. In one of the most touching and heartwarming moments in the book, the narrator says, “He wants to put his story next to hers” (322). Stories are restorative when they are shared with the living.
It is interesting to consider why Morrison chooses to end her novel by repeating various versions of the phrase: “It was not a story to pass on” (322-3). Like Kingston’s phrase: “You must not tell anyone,” this phrase is interesting given the fact that Morrison’s Beloved does in fact pass on the “unspeakable story” of American slavery. The important distinction to make between these two statements is in matter of agency. As seen by Sethe’s near death break-down, it seems that it is necessary for Sethe and her community to forget Beloved. They forget so that they might move forward. Morrison says,
There is a necessity to for remembering the horror, but of course there’s a necessity for remembering it in a manner in which it can be digested, in a manner in which the memory is not destructive. The act of writing the book, in a way, is a way of confronting it and making it possible to remember. ("In the Realm of Responsibility: A Conversation with Toni Morrison")
Perhaps Morrison is telling her audience that it is an act of empowerment for a survivor to choose to forget. This is very different, of course, from being forced to forget. By publishing Beloved, Morrison hopes not only to “[make] it possible to remember,” but to make it so that her culture will never forget the sins that have been committed against them.
In the narratives of “No Name Woman” and Beloved, the audience recognizes the denial of story to be an act of dehumanization which effects are devastating not only to the victim but also to generations to come who are also denied the truth of that person’s, or that people’s, contribution to our collective history. When we deny them, we seem to be denying a part of who we are. Storytelling, for Kingston and Morrison, is certainly a restorative and hopeful act which binds us together: past generations to future ones, author to reader, human to human. But the ghosts in “No Name Woman” and Beloved, it seems, are no longer human—they are the shadows of a dark history that exist beyond us. They are spirits whose hunger for justice, for understanding, for relationships, for appeasement can never be truly be satisfied despite our most honorable efforts. It is not humanly possible to offer a sacrifice sufficient enough to atone for such egregious sins. Kingston’s aunt, after all, is still nameless despite her niece’s offering. And Beloved, like the sixty million and more, is still dead. Story is powerful, indeed, but it cannot mend all wounds, right every sin. Stories are for the living, not for the dead. We tell stories in the hope that the future will be, in some way, better than the past. Kingston’s “No Name Woman” and Morrison’s Beloved tell the powerful forbidden stories of their ancestors so they and their audiences might fit their own stories into greater narrative of human history.
Works Cited
Garbus, Lisa. "The Unspeakable Stories of 'Shoah' and 'Beloved'." College Literature 26.1 (1999): 52-68. Print.
"In the Realm of Responsibility: A Conversation with Toni Morrison." The Women's Review of Books 5.6 (1988): 5-6. Print.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. First Vintage International Edition ed. New York: Vintage International, 1987. 1-324. Print.
Kingston, Maxine H. “No Name Woman” from The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of Girlhood Among Ghosts. New York: Knopf/Random House, 1976. 1-9. Print.