July 26, 2010
“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid
I read this story aloud twice because Kincaid’s one-two punch deliver of commands from a
mother to her daughter is layered and poetic. Unlike the other stories we’ve read together,
Kincaid’s story offers no setting or character description. But much can be inferred from the type
of advice the mother gives her daughter.
Ricky wondered why there are no names mentioned in the story. I asked the group what
they thought. Johnett said, “There’s no names because it’s the advice in the story that matters.”
When I asked if advice to a boy would be different than the advice delivered to a “girl”- everyone
emphatically said “yes!” Sam summed it up, “If this was titled “Boy”, the advice would just be “Don’t
get a girl pregnant.” Darrell added, “And act like a man.”
One of the most memorable pieces of the story and one that elicited gasps and giggles is
the repletion of the word, “slut”: “..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;” and “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;” and “…and
this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming;”. The
“slut” reference bothered the girls more than the boys but as we explored this topic, we realized
that our own mothers had other ways of saying essentially the same thing.
Jennifer wrote a poem at the end of the session, written in the voice of the daughter
speaking back to her mother. Her commanding poem incorporated phrases used in the story and
demonstrated the daughter’s ability to stand up for herself. In Jennifer’s poem, the daughter was
well-matched to her mother’s relentless nagging.
Deborah brought up this line, “this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child
before it even becomes a child.” This opened up a discussion about abortion and birth control.
Most of the girls were very negative about abortion and found the mother’s advice horrifying. We
reviewed when the story was first published- 1950’s in Antigua. What were the options for birth
control, if any? How does this statement relate to the mother who abandons her infant in the
woods in “The Man Who Found You In The Woods”, a story we had read a week earlier. I didn’t
want to get into a moral debate on the issue, but I thought it was important to put each of these
stories in a historical context.
Nie noticed that some of the advice seemed contradictory, particularly the advice to act
ladylike in combination with advice like “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”. We talked about advice that was
practical and the advice cloaked in superstition. All along, we were reminded of the useful and
strange advice passed down from our own family members.
The reference to “wharf-rat boys” which appears throughout the story was translated by
the group as the equivalent of “hood rats”- folks who are “trouble” and will get you into trouble.
The girls related to the passage about smile-differentiation: “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.” The group acted out some of their own smile
variations and we laughed at how funny these smiles look out of context.
Initially this story was quite foreign to the group- both in its substance and style. Yet as
we talked about it, we discovered the universality in parental advice. Take it or leave it. This was
one of my favorite sessions.