One's power and position in a society can give them the "right" or ability to name or un-name a person. Someone can gain this right by his or her status socially, financially, and even racially. If it's their own child, of course, they have every right in the world to name him or her. But in some cultures, as is evident in "No Name Woman", they have the right to take away someone's name if they have disgraced their family and/or community. A name is very significant because it gives a person a sense of who they are, an identity. In "No Name Woman", Kingston's aunt had no identity except for th

Kingston's parents control Kingston with strict rules and guidelines. Kingston goes against these rules, she publishes the story of the aunt who is unspoken of, and then creates an identity for herself that she likes, regardless of what her parents say. Mrs. Cullinan is Angelou's boss who controls her with rules, changes her name to Mary, and Angelou then takes away Mrs. Cullinan's power and regains her own identity. Kingston and Angelou prove in their essays that power gives control, control gives ownership, which in turn can make or break an identity.

"'You must not tell anyone,' my mother said, 'what I am about to tell you.'"(341) Kingston's mother tells her the story of her father's sister, her aunt who is the woman with no name. She tells about how she disgraced their family by becoming pregnant by a man other than her husband and how her family disowned her and refused to even utter her name for the rest of time. The first sentence of the story shows that a person of the Chinese culture holds a very high respect for their family's rules and wishes. Kingston's mother tells her the story as a warning. "'Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don't humiliate us. You wouldn't like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful.'"(343) In the Chinese culture, the men have all the power, elderly men more than younger men, but it's still a male dominated culture. The women can never talk back or go against the rules. They must simply do what they are told and never have any complaints about it. They aren't allowed to privately complain about it either. "The round moon cakes and round doorways, the round tables of graduated size that fit one roundness inside another, round windows and rice bowls - these talismans had lost their power to warn this family of the law: a family must be whole, faithfully keeping the d

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1288
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)