theguide11e

Jamaica Kincaid Girl

Instructor's Notes

The following resources are available for this selection through the “Resources” panel or by clicking on the “Browse Resources for this Unit” button:

An assignable version of the “Analyze and Write” activity following this reading
An autograded multiple-choice quiz
A summary activity with a sample summary as feedback
A synthesis prompt

JAMAICA KINCAID was born Elaine Potter Richardson in 1949 in St. Johns, Antigua, in the West Indies. As Kincaid’s mother had more children, the once-close relationship between mother and daughter became strained, and Kincaid began to feel increasingly restricted by life in Antigua under British rule. At seventeen, she left Antigua to work as an au pair in New York, where she attended night classes and began working as a freelance writer. At the start of her writing career, she changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid to shed the “weights” (as she put it) of her past life. Kincaid’s stories have appeared in such prestigious venues as Rolling Stone,The Paris Review, and The New Yorker, where she became a staff writer in 1978. “Girl” was published first in The New Yorker and later in Kincaid’s first book, At the Bottom of the River (1984), an anthology of short stories that won the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award. Her next book, Annie John (1985), also a collection of stories, centered on a girl growing up in the West Indies. In addition to two novels—Lucy (1990) and The Autobiography of My Mother (1996)—Kincaid has published two books of nonfiction: My Brother (1997), the story of her brother Devon Drew’s short life, and A Small Place (2000), an examination of her native Antigua. Kincaid now makes her home in Vermont, where her husband is a composer and professor of music at Bennington College.

As you read “Girl,” listen to the rhythms of the language, and consider how the almost poetic litany of instructions reflects and shapes the relationship between mother and daughter.

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W ash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don’t walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn’t have gum on it, because that way it won’t hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna1 in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn’t speak to wharf-rat boys, not even to give directions; don’t eat fruits on the street — flies will follow you; but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a button-hole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t have a crease; this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen,2 make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don’t squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don’t pick people’s flowers—you might catch something; don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona;3 this is how to make pepper pot;4 this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad won’t fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?

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ANALYZE & WRITE

Use the following questions to begin analyzing “Girl”:

This story is told almost exclusively from the mother’s point of view; with the exception of two italicized interjections from the daughter (“but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school”; “but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?”), the words are entirely the mother’s. How does the language the mother uses, and the instructions she gives, shape your understanding of the mother’s character? How would you describe her relationship with her daughter based on her litany of advice?
If irony is the discrepancy between the truth and what is said or the gap between what is expected and what actually happens, is “Girl” ironic? Why or why not?
Kincaid grew up in St. John’s, Antigua, in the 1950s and 1960s, and while the setting is not specified, “Girl” seems to have been set in a similar place and time. What can you infer about the society in which “Girl” is set from the advice the mother gives and the language she uses? How might the story’s first readers (subscribers to The New Yorker in 1978) have reacted and why? How might your reaction differ from that of the story’s initial audience?