No Name Woman Summary

The novel opens with the narrator's mother telling her that her father had a sister. In 1924, the narrator's father and other men in his family, including his sister's husband, leave China for America. The narrator's aunt becomes pregnant even though her husband has been gone for years. The villagers raid their home the night the aunt's baby is due, and the aunt runs away, delivers the baby in the pigsty and throws herself and the baby down the well. The narrator comments that her mother likes to tell stories to warn her children about life. The narrator continues describing an invisible world of ghosts her mother tells of and the lack of separation between China and America.

The narrator continues pondering the story of her aunt and wonders where she would have met the man who fathered her child...