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." Later in the scene, Moon Orchid's husband explains to her, "I have important American guests who come inside my house to eat. . . . You can't talk to them. You can barely talk to me." Despite Moon Orchid's incessant talking in front of Brave Orchid's children, she is utterly mute while under the dominion of her husband. Ironically, even in the madness to which Moon Orchid succumbs after surviving her husband's emotional abuse, she is unable to talk. Again, Kingston, by writing Moon Orchid's story, puts the voice back into Moon Orchid's life.
In the memoir's last chapter, "A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe," Kingston relates her own search for a personal, individualized voice. If she finds that traditional Chinese society silences women, she also discovers that well-behaved females in American society are equally expected to be quiet. In order to feel even partially accepted in American culture, young Kingston retreats behind an emotional wall and loses her voice: "We American-Chinese girls had to whisper to make ourselves American-feminine. Apparently we whispered even more softly than the Americans. . . . Most of us eventually found some voice, however faltering." Despite this whispering, Kingston, even as a child, knows the consequences of being voiceless. In one poignant and painful episode, she describes the hatred she felt for another Chinese girl who refused to speak and the physical bullying she meted out to get this silent girl to talk. Ironically, her hatred for the girl is all the more vivid because this silent girl is so much like her — physically, emotionally, and socially. She fears becoming exactly like this voiceless (and nameless) girl, who serves as Kingston's alter ego.
