In “Silence,” Chinese-American author Maxine Hong Kingston relates her childhood experiences in American and Chinese schools. Kingston describes the difficulty she had with speaking English out loud at her American school, which was in sharp contrast to her experience at her Chinese school. Through the use of many comparisons and contrasts primarily relating to her difficulty with the English language, Kingston explores the sharp differences between the cultures, the teachers’ attitudes towards children, classroom expectations, the sound of voices, and her own self-image. While Kingston is unable to speak, she lives in noisy world where her silence is not golden. Kingston’s “Silence” it is not so much about her inability to speak, but about her perceived inability to feel like she fit in and belonged.
There is a great deal of symbolism through the use of the color Black. She covers all her drawings with black crayons, as if she is creating a wall of protection, a separation of herself from the noisy world she is unable to make noise in. This view of black as being a form of protection further shows itself in her liking of the African American students in the class. By virtue of their skin color, they were already behind her curtain of black: they did not let her hide behind her silence. They talked to her despite her silence, as if she was “a daring talker too” (423) and were protective of her. Unlike the teachers who talked with much concern to her parents and sent her to speech therapy, they understood that her silence did not indicate communication problems or retardation. She hides in black, yet views the black as “full of possibilities” (423). The black curtain represents her need and desire to break through her silence: her black silence. She longs for the “curtains” of her silence to “swing open” – as she longs for her own inner self to break through her silence, to swing open (423).
Every day in American school, Kingston’s “silence became a misery” (424) that worsened the more she tried to speak out loud, alienating her from the very culture which she now lived in, and to a lesser extent, alienating her from the Chinese community also. Through the use of symbolic allegory, she writes about how different “I” is viewed by Americans from the Chinese… the American “I” being so assured, standing tall and strong, while the Chinese “I” is so intricate and complex (424), and that a Chinese name is written “small and crooked” (424). These are effective allegories of how Kingston viewed the Americans (tall and strong) and the Chinese (intricate and complex), yet viewed herself as “small and crooked” (424). To view oneself – to fit in – as an American “I” required one to be assured, standing tall and strong, but her inability to speak English out loud was most definitely not assured or standing tall and strong.
The American school students were expected to behave and conform as a group yet at the same time excel individually. They were required to line up as a group but also to stand in front of the class as individuals and speak. In Kingston’s Chinese school, however, the students chanted, read, and recited together, all as a group that works and plays together, nosily and loudly, but “not alone with one voice” (425). When they were required to recite for their teacher, they would do so quietly, alone with the teacher: not in front of the class for all to hear. Individuation was less desirable within the Chinese school then in the American school. For Kingston, the Chinese school system of working and playing together was a form of her black curtain that she hid behind: by being a part of the group, she could be loud and noisy but no one would hear her individual voice that she viewed as so inadequate and weak. Within the group, she could be the assured tall and strong person she so envied in the Americans, but without the risk of ridicule she faced when having to recite alone in the American school.
Kingston relates some remarkable contrasts between the two school systems she experienced, yet shows herself as an individual who ultimately felt like she did not, and could not, fit in. Her childish habit of covering all her drawings in black, symbolically covering herself in black and hiding behind a black curtain, her feeling of being more comfortable with the African American students, and her higher comfort level within the Chinese school system all relate an experience of alienation and discomfort for the author. An experience that still affects her to this day.
Written for Professor Sutter's English Composition I class at Pikes Peak Community College, 23rd February 2004
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