As with all of the female protagonists in her mother’s talk-stories, Kingston’s reworking of the No Name Woman tale emphasizes the similarities between her aunt and herself. For example, describing how her aunt “combed individuality” into her hair, Kingston imagines that first she “brushed her hair back from her forehead,” then “looped a piece of thread, knotted into a circle between her index fingers and thumbs,” around any loose hairs across her front hairline, and finally “pulled the thread away from her skin, ripping the hairs out neatly.” Significantly, Kingston then writes, “My mother did the same to me and my sisters and herself,” which draws a parallel between her aunt and herself. Even more important in this ritual of how No Name Woman pulls out any loose hairs is the complex knot that she uses, which Kingston describes as “a pair of shadow geese biting.” The making of this complicated knot foreshadows the last chapter, “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” in which Kingston relates the story of ancient Chinese knot-makers, who tied string into intricate designs, one of which was so complicated that it blinded the knot-maker. “If I had lived in China,” Kingston speculates, “I would have been an outlaw knot-maker,” which is an indirect reference to No Name Woman.
Although Kingston honors her aunt by retelling No Name Woman’s story in The Woman Warrior, she blames herself for having kept silent about this woman for more than twenty years. She writes, “But there is more to this silence: they want me to participate in her punishment. And I have.” Here, the short sentence “And I have” emphasizes the guilt Kingston still feels for having neglected No Name Woman’s memory for as long as she has. Having told a family secret, she fears recrimination from her parents and, ironically, worries that her aunt haunts her because she is displeased that Kingston has revealed her story. “I do not think she always means me well,” Kingston writes about her aunt. “I am telling on her, and she was a spite suicide, drowning herself in the drinking water.” However, Kingston also reveals that it was necessary, both for her own sense of self and to honor her aunt’s memory, to countermand Brave Orchid’s wish that she keep No Name Woman’s story a secret: “The [aunt’s] real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family’s deliberately forgetting her. Her betrayal so maddened them, they saw to it that she would suffer forever, even after death.” Although Kingston never learns what her aunt’s real name is, she alleviates her ancestor’s long suffering by giving her the only name she can: No Name Woman.
