Girl
-Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid is award-winning author whose work mainly speaks on the issues of being a girl in poor 3rd world country. She currently lives in New England but she was born and raised in Antigua, an island in the West Indies. She wrote Girl as a conversation between her mother and her pre-teen self. With a blunt and formal tone Girl paints a picture of a girl growing into puberty in a low socio-economic situation in a 3rd world country. Girl is a replica of a one sided conversation between a mother to her daughter; the mother advices and warns her daughter on what a girl her age should and shouldn’t do. The story starts out with a demand which continues on to a laundry list of chores and duties. The tone remains formal
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Since her mother warns her from being a slut she tells her about a medicine that would ‘throw away a child before it even becomes a child”(Kincaid, 470) which suggests that the mother did not trust her daughter and feared that she would become a ‘slut’ despite the constant warnings. “You are not a boy” (Kincaid, 470) perfectly sums up the entire story because this one sentence summarizes all the warnings and advice the mother was giving her daughter. In Becoming members of Society: Learning the Social Meanings of Gender by Aaron H. Devor it shows that gender is a merely socially constructed and assigned and in Girl by Jamaica Kincaid that is exactly what’s …show more content…
• Given the time and place the story is set in, was the mother overbearing on her daughter?
• Do you think the mother went through a similar situation with her mother?
Work Cited
Kincaid, Jamaica. “Girl.” Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, Bonnie Lisle. 7thed.Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 469-470
Devor, Aaron H. “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Meaning of Gender” Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, Bonnie Lisle. 7thed.Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004.
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Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American writer, who was once lived under British rule in Antigua. The women, who were under British rule faced patriarchy. She grew up with a love of books, and wanted to further her education. Unfortunately, as a woman she was unable to have that opportunity. In Kincaid’s, “Girl” there is a sense of denouncing women.
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The “Girl” is a poem that was written by Jamaica Kincaid. The poem depicts a mother instructing her daughter of what to do, and how to do it. As stated in the poem the child was being instructed on how to buy cotton which shows that the person receiving the instruction is a girl, “buying cotton to make a nice blouse,” shows females attributes and qualities. As quoted, “iron your father’s khaki shirt so that it doesn’t have a crease,” shows that it is a mother speaking. The tone of the poem is one of denial, because of the instruction in which the mother was giving to the daughter.