Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

Girl

(1978)

Jamaica Kincaid

(1949– )

Notes

This short story was first published on June 26, 1978 in The New Yorker.

In a 2007 interview with Brittnay Buckner, Kincaid talks about the story:

The first short story I wrote is a story called "Girl" and it's one sentence long. I wrote it and I said to myself, when I gave it to the editor, "He won't like this." When I was writing it, I thought, "No one will like this, but this is the way I want to write." And it was published in The New Yorker and it's now, of everything I've written, it's the most anthologized. Practically in every guide to writing and so on. And sometimes teachers come up to me and say they use it in writing class, in sociology class. But it's just one sentence long about a girl's mother telling her how to be a woman. (Buckner 468)

dasheen: taro

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pepper pot: a spicy West Indian stew

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Last updated July 20, 2009