Caroline D – Intro to Multicultural Literature

By Caroline Donnelly

She asked for it

She should have not been wearing those slutty clothes

She should have not gone out at night

She was alone

She never said she didn’t want to have sex

Where were her friends?

She was flirting with me

Never once did she say she was afraid

She should have been happy I choose her

She is lying for the attention

I thought she liked it rough

He Never Asked

I choose to write my found poem on the multitude of articles that I have seen over the last couple years about what people say about women who come forward as rape victims. I think it needs to needs recognized that not all rape victims are women and not all rapists are men. But unfortunately a majority of the victims are women and the majority of the rapists are men. This topic is so important to me because all women that I know in my personal life have suffered some form of sexual assault. The majority have not been raped or even violently attacked but they all have been groped, pinched and slapped by men and even other women. It is horrible that we as a society are no longer surprised or even concerned when a woman is catcalled or casually groped by other people. It is horrible that women are taught from a very young age skills to protect themselves against rape and men. Nighttime is never safe for women expect when we are in a crowd of other women and even then there is still fear. The point of this poem is not to instill fear in other women but to show everyone what almost every women has gone through their whole lives. This topic is extremely frustrating and angering to me but I will continue to speak about it till my last breath to help inform other people.

By Caroline Donnelly

Maxine Hong Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior” is a novel that depicts the stories and tragedies that Kingston grew up hearing. In the first chapter the No Name Woman , the readers are told the story of her Aunt that her Family refuses to remember. There are many fascinating aspects to the story but two major details come to mind. The first being that Kingston choose to believe that her Aunt had been raped rather than have sex for enjoyment. First off, I agree that her forgotten Aunt was most likely raped and forced to suffer in silence. Kingston wrote, “Women in old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil. I wonder whether he makes himself when he joined the raid on her family (6)”. Kingston’s reasoning for the fact that her Aunt was most likely raped was because women back then most likely did not even consider doing anything ‘frivolous’ such as having sex. But I do not even think that was it either, women were constantly watched and judged by everyone around them. They took appearances and the way people acted very seriously. I do not believe that her Aunt would be willing to risk her life, the reputation of her family and then her families hate for meaningless sex. As soon as her Aunt realized that she was pregnant she had to have realized that her life was going to end. Which given the fact that she gave birth in a pigsty said a lot about her character. “She got to her feet to fight better and remembered that old-fashioned women gave birth in their pigsties to fool the jealous, pain-dealing gods, who do not snatch pigs (Kingston 14)”. It was clear from the fact that she wanted to protect her child from evil gods that she was not an evil woman but an unfortunate one. Even when she hated the child that she carried, she could not do any harm to it. Which seems like a crazy sentence due to the fact that she killed the child. It must be remembered that in her mind she was not harming the infant but saving it from a vicious, hard life ; to her, killing the child was also saving it.

The second fascinating aspect of the first chapter in Kingston’s “The Women Warrior” would have to be the response that her family gave after raid on their house. They denounced her, “Aiaa, we’re going to die. Death is coming. Look what you’ve done. You’ve killed us. Ghost! Dead Ghost! Ghost! You’ve never been born (Kingston 14)”. Not only did they denounce her but she became someone who was never born. She became someone who they never loved or had happy memories with. She became a ghost in the moment, it did not matter that she was still alive when they rejected her. She became a ghost when she no longer had a life to live or a family to live it with. “The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but her family’s deliberately forgetting her. Her betrayal so maddened them, they saw to it that she would suffer forever, even after death (Kingston 16)”. The horrible part is the fact that her family was most likely not made up with bad people. Kingston’s family rejected their daughter, her Aunt, because that was what was expected and the cultural norm. They did not send her to her death with cruelty and hate in their hearts but with fear of the unknown and the culture that made them do this. That is not to say that these people are kind nor are they good but it needs to be remembered that this is all part of their culture. To ignore and forgo their culture would have placed them side by side with Kingston’s Aunt. It is very clear that they were unable to ignore their cultures even for their only daughter. This chapter is an entire tragedy in the making and they all knew it and chose to ignore it. Other chapters of this novel have happier stories that allow the readers some peace but this is not one of them.

Discussion Questions

Why do you think that they chose to ignore the Aunts pregnancy until it was too late?
What reason does the author have for not asking for more information about her forgotten Aunt?
Do you think that the family was in anyway justified for their treatment of the No Name Woman?

Works Cited

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. Vintage International, 1976.

Author: Caroline D

Found Poems

Forgotten Daughter

Hi! I am Caroline.