No Name Woman

Maxine Hong Kingston's autobiography begins with her mother telling her a story which she must never repeat about the aunt she never knew she had. In China the aunt had become pregnant long after her husband and brothers had celebrated their "hurry up" weddings and left for America. The weddings had been to ensure that all the men who went to America would come home and resume their places in Chinese society, but the aunt's adultery had disrupted that society. When the pregnancy became obvious, the enraged villagers had raided the family house, breaking and destroying their possessions as the aunt had broken and destroyed social order. That night, after the raid the aunt gave birth to her baby in a pigsty and then drowned herself and the child in the family well. The family never mentions her, pretending she was never born.

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