But telling everyone that she had an aunt is exactly what Kingston does, and for a very complex reason. If Kingston's purpose in writing The Woman Warrior is to solidify her identity as a female Chinese American, then for her to remain silent about her aunt is tantamount to her rejecting her own sense of self. She cannot deny a voice for her aunt — "my aunt, my forerunner" — without denying one for herself, which is why she reinterprets Brave Orchid's talk-story by creating a more individualized life for her aunt, who, she imagines, used a "secret voice, a separate attentiveness," much like she herself does throughout the memoir. "Unless I see her life branching into mine," Kingston writes of No Name Woman, "she gives me no ancestral help."
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.
