The Woman Warrior

The Woman Warrior Summary | No Name Woman Summary

The novel opens with the narrator's mother telling her that her father had a sister. In 1924, the narrator's father and other men in his family, including his sister's husband, leave China for America. The narrator's aunt becomes pregnant even though her husband has been gone for years. The villagers raid their home the night the aunt's baby is due, and the aunt runs away, delivers the baby in the pigsty and throws herself and the baby down the well. The narrator comments that her mother likes to tell stories to warn her children about life. The narrator continues describing an invisible world of ghosts her mother tells of and the lack of separation between China and America.

The narrator continues pondering the story of her aunt and wonders where she would have met the man who fathered her child. The narrator questions whether she was perhaps raped. The aunt had been married to her husband the day before he left for America. The narrator wonders if her aunt had been forced to sit at the outcast table. The narrator's mother speaks of the aunt as though she was there, but the narrator knows that according to custom, both women would have lived with their in-laws and would not have lived in the same home. The aunt was the only girl in a family of five children.

The aunt's story begins taking on different possible tangents. Perhaps, the narrator considers, her aunt enjoyed the man she was with and was a wild woman who was preoccupied with her appearance. As a result, maybe many men looked at her lustfully. Another possibility is that the aunt was unusually beloved by her family for being a girl. The narration breaks with comments about the Chinese customs of talking loudly, walking erect, and remaining silent at the dinner table. The narrator knows that her aunt never said who the man was that impregnated her. Again, the narration breaks and the narrator comments on how she always adds the word "brother" to boys' names because she felt sisterly affection made sense over having unwanted attention from boys.

The aunt's story continues explaining that the aunt's supposed betrayal happened during a time of drought, ghost plagues and war with the Japanese. The village believes that the aunt's infidelity harms them, and the raid on the house is meant to curse her. The narrator retells the story of the aunt giving birth in the pigsty with more detail, describes her nursing her baby and comments that taking the baby to the well with her was actually an act of love.

The narrator is told by her mother never to tell anyone about her aunt and that her father does not want to hear of her. The narrator feels like she is participating in the punishment of her aunt by not speaking of her. In the twenty years since hearing the story, the narrator never mentions her aunt. The aunt's ghost will have suffered for all this time because she must fight for food. The aunt's ghost haunts the narrator; therefore, the narrator devotes pages to her. The narrator comments that the Chinese are afraid of drowned ghosts because they are looking to pull someone down in the water to replace them.