Wild Imaginations By Maxine

In the first chapter of The Woman Warrior, Maxine and her interthoughts give way to her identity as Maxine. When she talks about her aunt, she also talks about herself in a sense. Maxine is much like her aunt. She is "Lost". Her aunt was eccentric and different because of the way she acted, according to Maxine. While Maxine is trying to discover who she herself really is, she compares the aunt to herself. How she only wants Chinese boys to like her, not black, white, blue, and green boys to like her. She also draws a thick line between Chinese and American culture, but crosses through it, back and forth, as she thinks of her aunt and what her aunt really was, who she loved, how she acted, how she felt, etc. The aunt is this mysterious figure in Maxine's life, that Maxine strives to figure out, to sharpen this image of a shadowy, blurry figure of a women who loved her child. Maxine is on the borderline of Chinese culture and American culture. Her aunt was on the borderline of Chinese culture and rebellion, identity; until the Chinese villagers forced her to walk a lonely rose on the rebellion and identity side.

But in all of this, Maxine has to also choose whether to become what her ancestors expect of her, a Chinese girl or an American Rebel. Is there a middle, an in-between, a compromise? She could call herself Chinese-American. You can call yourself anything but that does not matter until you enforce it, or it means something to you and to the others around you. Would the Chinese people accept that? When her mother tells her that story about her aunt, is that a warning that you can't be both, like her aunt attempted to do?

When Maxine thinks about all these different sides of her aunt and what her aunt could of been, she is acting through her aunt's life possiblities and exploring what options she has as a Chinese woman.

In No Name Woman, there are many more aspects of aunt and Maxine that under careful observation can be discovered. So what do you think?