1. Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe: Maxine's voice
1. What's Barbarian--speaking another incomprehensible language
2. Ending of at the western palace:
1. Moon Orchid happy at the state hospital--we're all women; we understand each other; we speak the same language
2. Brave Orchid's paranoia about husband taking another wife
3. Moon Orchid like no name woman; Brave Orchid like warrior
3. transition
1. brother's report to sister to Maxine about the trip to LA--continuous and discontinuous
2. topic becomes her style of telling stories: knotted--she's outlaw knot maker--twisted into designs; not math major like brothers and sisters 163
1. outlawed because so intricate--twisted into designs
3. contrast style of previous chapter
4. topic is Maxine and her voice
4. mother cut tongue
1. graphic description of inside of mouth--physical aspects of speech
2. so she wouldnt be tongue tied--move in any language
3. Maxine feels it gave her a terrible time talking
1. broken voice or long complete grammatical sentence
2. speech impediment--see tape interview
4. she and mother dont understand each other
1. picture of BO in previous chapter is uncomprehending
5. Maxine's self-expression--blocked by her Chinese foreignness
1. covered school paintings with black paint [making them hard to see]--but curtains swinging open
2. flunked kindergarten because she wouldnt speak
3. had to talk in in school--talk a misery, silence a misery --166
4. difficulty with American "I"--ego and assertiveness --writing and saying "here"
5. cant say things because they violate curses
6. going to Chinese school--everything chanted together; no public recitation
1. discrepancies--wild capture the flag; no supervision during recess
2. descriptions of voice--splinters, crippled animal 169
7. Mother's insistence on folkways in conflict with children's american view
1. sent to Rexall to get reparation candy because mother feared curse of medicine sent to wrong house. 170
2. mother's obsession with vengeance
3. "they wont understand stuff like that"--child caught between two cultures
4. more misunderstanding--comedy of errors--Maxine forced to ask druggist for candy; he generously gives it to her without understanding, mother is confirmed in demanding bravery from kids
5. shy vs. brave
8. Chinese vs. American language
1. sounds ugly to American ears not beautfil like Japanese sayonara words 171
2. Normal chinese women's voices are strong and bossy 171
3. Chinese cant hear americans; we had to make American feminine speaking personality
9. the silent girl [like Moon Orchid or No name woman]***
1. we were the same--bad in sports--hated by Maxine [scapegoating; stoning] 173
2. dark narrative; school deserted; sun going down
3. I could fly [like a witch] going to forbiden places--boys lavoratory[boys and girls]; taps on shoes-- hair of the gorilla[BO's apeman story]--approaching the monstrous--
4. Wants to hate, up close
1. I hated fragility--doughy face
2. not like the pretty girls
3. hated the way she folded wax paper--176
4. tied in with her not being fashionable
5. squeezes cheeks
6. making her talk--cutting the frenum; political interrogation
7. wants her to say stop
5. Your disgusting--if she had bound feet, I would have...stomped on them 178--in lavoratory forever...trying to help you 180
1. more ghostly--walls leaning; day geting later
2. [tormenting her like BO torments MO---for her own good?]
3. M. starts to cry--she's tormenting herself--being BO to Maxine--psychodrama--and Maxine to BO
6. worst thing yet I had done to another person 181
7. rescued by sister--Max. acts righteous--later encountered and made no change
8. punished with 18th months' mysterious illness; best time of her life [cf. MO's happiness]--complete withdrawal from world instead of starting junior high school--reading Victorian novels--her rite of passage
1. mother gets her up one day--no explanation
9. she was supported; just like the silent girl, who was protected by her family, just like in China--not out there with ghosts and boys and strangers
10. Secrets to hold in; another variation on silence and speech 182
1. immigration secrets--never tell
1. lie to americans [Kingston revealing secrets]
2. secret languages of flags in chinatown 183
3. talk-story as secret;
4. parents wont tell truth to children because they are ghosts
1. dont explain holidays and rituals 185
2. hit you if you violate taboo without your knowing what taboo is
6. Speech and sanity
1. I thought talking and not talking made the difference between sanity and insanity. 186
1. Crazy woman next door
2. crazy mary in the slough--witch woman; great detail; ghost stories; angry rather than happy witch--eventually locked up
3. Pi ah Nah--village idiot...lapsing into talk story
4. Go down into the creeks in San Luis--see what you find
2. I am crazy woman in our house 189
1. talked to people in my head; I was messy; mysterious illness; vampire nightmares
2. getting stranger, deliberately--make herself unsellable
7. Fear of the Chinese feminine mold--old country ghosts
1. She acts strange to avoid being married or sold off
1. fear of parents returning to China which they regard as home. 190
2. improve voice--pressed duck quack according to wealthiest villager 192
2. Chinese girls
1. Grandfather: girls are maggots 191
2. Boy-birth gets one-month party; girl-birth kept quiet --clerk typists vs. truck drivers
3. "What an asshole" she mutters, like father muttering "Dog vomit" 192
4. wealthiest villager wife--powerful presence in community--threatens; says she has pressed duck voice
5. awful sound of chinese opera
1. she sings "beat me," the audience laughts; kill disobedient woman is OK--Confucius
2. women sing: Married to a cudgel, be faithful to it
6. Finding husband
7. FOB are fresh off boat husbands
8. Then the mentally retarded boy--
1. This monster, this birth defect ; The were person--another paranoid ghost story; the hulk
2. porno in cartons; mother wants him anyway as a rich suitor 197 ***
9. hunching sitter--stitting ghost
8. 197: List of supressed things to tell her mother--over two hundred
1. confessions of guilt and fears--she envies confession 198
2. mother doesnt want disturbance at peaceful time in evenings 198
3. memory of killing spider; relieved by the confession--seeing the top magician
4. Mother wouldnt listen--panic experience
9. 202 Showdown with mother
1. blurts out all the suppressed stuff at dinner one night--her self assertion and way to the future--finding herself--woman warrior's education--202***
1. your stories...have no logic, they scramble me up. You lie with stories...cant tell the difference
2. mother is champion talker at the same time--tells her she's misinterpreted mother; her paranoia like Moon Orchid's
1. shouting match 202--like Chinese opera
2. when I get to college
3. as if she's not charming--Geisha manner, incredible beauty
3. Mother says get out: Ho chi Kuei [sounds of chinese enter the story]
4. She wants it logical--Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways and sidewalks
10. Response to Ho Chi Kuei
1. all the different meanings; looking up the word--sometimes hostile, sometimes not--ghosts
2. her desire to learn things straight and logical--confucius 204
3. but it keeps getting more complicated; not science and math
4. finding out truth--exorcize ghosts
5. trying again to untangle things
6. immigrant women working in fields to send back money--[guilt for departure?]
7. wants to go to china and find out the truth for herself--nice if Communists were taking care of themselves
11. Resolution: I told my mother I talk story; the beginning is her's the ending is mine--there is no line demarcating 206
1. Relation between the two stories: art conquers all. Cf.Bien Pretty
2. Grandmother loved theatre--saved from bandits by being at theatre--she had bound feet
3. Songs of Tsai Yen, poetess of AD 175 heard in theatre
4. Daughter of scholar; captured by barbarian Chieftain; rides with him and bears children on horseback
5. twelve year captivity; speaks chinese to her children only who dont understand her
6. barbarians music were death sounds of arrows
7. she hears their singingto moon with flutes; yearning toward high note
8. she's disturbed by music; sings here own longing song in Chinese; eventually sings to Barbarians
9. they respond to it and so do her children
10. she brings it back to china and they sing it today about longing; forever wandering***
11. it translated well 109