Drawing on Ahmed`s concept of emotion, the article examines how emotion and impression, conceived as an effect without a referent, are inextricably woven into the socio-cultural fabric of human interactions, a phenomenon represented in Ding Ling`s “When I was in Xia Village.” Focusing on the workings of the social stigma of immorality borne by the “comfort woman,” this article explores the possibility of vindication and of the redressing of collective indiscretions, since the story provocatively portrays wanton gender discrimination and the social construction of shame derived from an ideology of immaculacy. By analyzing the ways in which social stigma is culturally and symbolically inflicted on the protagonist by the local people, the article contests the intrinsic logic of the creation of emotion based on the binary of self and other. It thus shows how dyadic relations no longer hold true with respect to gender and coloniality, while illustrating how othering and being othered take place internally, through a symbolic violence that is couched in the cultural language of emotion and impression during the course of everyday communication. The article suggests that traumatic experience can be overcome through the empathetic sharing of others` sufferings and through the act of writing, imperatively represented as a critical means of expression as well as female empowerment―two practices that may eventually bring forth a transnational alliance for resolving the intractability of the colonial past.