Ms
...woman in an American culture. It also asks what it means to be a woman or human being in American culture. There are several conflicts to note. There is the individual vs the communal in China as compared to the same situation in America. There is the individual vs the family and there is the Chinese vs the American

heritage of the narrator. Which is she to be? Chinese? American? When is it appropriate to be one or the other? Who is she? The No-Name Woman seems as much to be the narrator as the narrator's aunt. You should notice that Kingston does not give the narrator a name anymore than she does the aunt. The narrator is expected to participate in the punishment of the dead aunt, and yet, as an American she questions that expectation. But she is a rebel only in herself (if at all)....she is unable to actually overcome the power of her Chinese cultural background.
Her Chinese aunt, of course, was a rebel. She was a married woman in China who had an extramarital affair which resulted in a child. There is no doubt of her guilt. Whether or not her punishment was just is part of the problem for the narrator. You remember, her mother tells her the story of her aunt only because the narrator is entering puberty. This is a subject not to be discussed again...it is a warning for her to take care. So she wonders about the aunt. And in her wondering, her western/American values begin to surface. She tries in many ways to justify what her aunt did, but her justifications are western. She does understand that based on Chinese customs, her aunt was guilty and deserved to be forgotten. But she sympathizes with her aunt. Why? Because she knows it could happen to her, and she knows what the results would be for her as well. She knows why her mother has told her the story, and in her way, she is questioning the right of her family to punish...
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