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The Woman Next Door
– Another neighbor from a family of Christian converts who sent for her in China after they had earned enough money in California. By the time she arrived, nearly twenty years old, she was supposedly crazy. Kingston describes her as “a large girl” with “a big black mole on her face”—normally a sign of good luck in Chinese culture. One day, a delivery person for the pharmacist delivers Crazy Mary’s pills to Kingston’s home and Brave Orchid is outraged, due to the implication that the messenger has brought sickness into their household. Kingston recalls that Crazy Mary “seemed cheerful, but pointed at things that were not there.” Eventually, she is sent to a “crazyhouse” and spends the rest of her life there, much like Moon Orchid. Also like Kingston’s aunt, Crazy Mary supposedly said that she liked living at the asylum.
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Crazy Mary Character Timeline in The Woman Warrior
The timeline below shows where the character Crazy Mary 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
When a delivery boy accidentally brought Crazy Mary ’s pills to the laundry, Brave Orchid sent Kingston to go to the drugstore to...
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...door who “was chatty one moment […] and shut up the next.” There was also Crazy Mary , who “wore pajamas” and “[lurched] out of dark corners.” She was eventually “locked up...
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