Girl

“Girl” By Jamaica Kincaid

The short story “Girl”, written by Jamaica Kincaid was a great story. Jamaica might have name the story “Girl” because the story focuses on a girl’s role as a girl in a household. Maybe this was her life as a girl growing up. In this poem, the whole time it talks about what a girl should do and not do, and so I believe that the title was called “Girl” because the poem focuses on how to be a girl.

The voice in the story seems like it is coming from someone who is trying to teach a girl how to be a girl. I think that the voice of this poem comes from an elder who is a woman and is trying to teach the little girl, such as a Mother. For example, the first couple words “Wash the white clothes on Monday, and put them on the stone heap, wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them at the clothesline to dry” (319) tells that the mother is explaining to the girl what to do as a woman. I think that the story was written like this because in any culture a Mother is the teacher of their daughters. So in other words, because a Mother is a daughter’s greatest teacher on how to behave like a woman, it was written in a way where the Mother tells the daughter what to do and not to do, and then girl asks questions.

The point of the story is how she was taught growing up. The way she wrote the story was what a girl is supposed to do while that girl was growing up. I think that it also has culture rooted in this story, such as in their culture what is expected of the girls. In certain cultures there are certain things that a girl should not do, and some of the things she described in here are don’t sing benna in Sunday school, or walk and dress like a slut, nor swat down to play marbles.