The language of silence

¶ … Language of Silence

Maxine Hong-Kingston describes the difficulties of growing up a Chinese-American girl with her powerful essay entitled, "The Language of Silence." The author begins the essay with an anecdote about her mother cutting her frenulum, her tongue, so that she might be able to speak better. Ironically, this act had the opposite effect: the young girl used silence to cope with her fears and anxieties about straddling two cultures. Hong-Kingston's essay is filled with stories like this one, in which the young Chinese-American girl struggles with her identity as being both Chinese and a girl. The central metaphor for the essay is silence, silence that can be both power and pain. The notion of finding her voice becomes the central symbol of the essay, because Hong-Kingston realizes that her voice equals self-expression. In order to navigate between her two cultural roles, Hong-Kingston builds up a barrier between her and the world, presumably to protect herself. The paradox the author describes in "The Language of Silence" is that her silence, while it served to segregate her, helped Hong-Kingston discover her true identity.

The first real irony of the essay is the story of her mother cutting her frenulum, so that she "would not be tongue-tied," and so she would be able to "move in any language." Hong-Kingston also describes the Chinese knot-making tradition, using the knot as a symbol of being tongue-tied. Although her mother supposedly snipped her frenulum to ease the girl's communication, the act only further her sense of isolation. Hong-Kingston felt connected neither to her Chinese heritage nor to her adopted American heritage because none of the other Chinese girls had their tongues cut, not even her sisters. Thus, this is one act that was supposed to facilitate her movement between cultures only served to separate Hong-Kingston from both her Chinese and American identities.

Hong-Kingston's cultural identity was further blurred when she entered kindergarten. She immediately "became silent in school." Her silence proved to be an effective barrier between her sensitive, unformed young identity and the outside world. Like her totally covering her artwork with black paint, Hong-Kingston blacked out her voice and consequently, her identity. Her silence was the worst during the three years she painted all black, the author writes. She made her silence visible, symbolized by the black paint. From the black paint, she conveniently flows into an anecdote about connecting with the black students at school. Hong-Kingston describes how the "Black Ghosts" had some of the loudest laughs at school and treated her with more kindness than any of the other children. Therefore, her hiding behind the color black, similar to her hiding behind her silence, helped her form a unique social identity.

However, Hong-Kingston notes that she became aware that silence had to do with being a Chinese girl, because she started to notice a trend: the other Chinese girls did not talk either." Part of her identity, expressed through language, is her gender identity. Hong-Kingston later writes that the American-Chinese girls had to whisper to seem feminine. Her silence transforms into a softness of speech that serves to distinguish her as a Chinese girl. She conforms and adapts to society's expectations of her as a Chinese-American girl. She uses language as a means to separate her from all other cultural identities, whether Japanese, Black, or white-American.