One of the people that Kingston mentions to illustrate her point that speech makes “the difference between sanity and insanity.” The woman next door had a husband had “bought her and married her” in China, but he had a child—“half Chinese and half white”—with another woman, whom the woman next door raised. Kingston describes her as “chatty one moment…and shut up the next.” The children fear her, “though she said nothing, did nothing.” Kingston recalls that she “died happy, sitting on the steps after cooking dinner.”
Get the entire The Woman Warrior LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Woman Next Door Character Timeline in The Woman Warrior
The timeline below shows where the character The Woman Next Door appears in The Woman Warrior. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
5. A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe
...difference between sanity and insanity.” She thought about the insane women she knew, such as the woman next door who “was chatty one moment […] and shut up the next.” There was also Crazy...
(full context)
