 Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Table of Contents It is also important to remember that the book begins with a warning to keep silent, a theme that Kingston will return to again and again. Kingston is trying to establish her own voice as a Chinese-American woman, which is difficult. She comes out of a heritage, which silences women, and she is now forced to straddle two very different cultures. She identifies with her silent ancestor, who disobeyed the rules for women, and was squelched for it. Kingston brings this forgotten ancestor to life by creating different versions of the story to imbue the aunt with motivation, personality, and power. She also defies her mother's warning by telling the story.
Kingston intentionally includes several anachronisms in her story. For instance, she describes the aunt cleaning a wound with peroxide. It is very unlikely that in her country, her aunt would have had access to peroxide. She also refers to origami, a Japanese art form of folding paper that was unknown in the aunt's time. The anachronisms, however, seem normal as Kingston weaves the past and present together throughout the chapter. She begins the first section of the book in the past, when she was a young girl entering puberty, she then goes back to scenes and stories from China, then she jumps forward to the present when she is a mature woman writing her memoirs. In this interweaving of past and present, she is able to show the importance of her cultural past in her present life. She also sets a structural pattern for the entire book Table of Contents | |
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