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.
3 barehead:
- bareheaded (Merriam-Webster)
without a covering for the head <went bareheaded
in the hot sun> <a bareheaded
boy who had lost his cap>
3
benna: Antiguan folk music
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- Music was divided into two categories—Sacred and Benna. You
were whipped at home for entertaining anything that savoured
of Benna and songs that were regarded as being food for the
soul were rigidly encouraged. The singing or humming of a
Benna tune on a Sunday was a grave sin. But the human spirit
cannot be conquered and, among the people of the Point, among
the twists and turns of Booby Alley and in the ghettoes of
Gray's Farm and Green Bay it formed a strong sub-culture. (Antigua Observer)
- Benna derives from a West African word for song-dance that
the slaves brought to the West Indies. It was a lively melody
set to simple repetitive lyrics that dealt with a specific
topic. Introduced during post slavery life, which was little
different from that which existed before, emancipated slaves
had to find an outlet, other than through religious song, to
express themselves and to forget about the social ills that
existed. Music that was simple and free, entertaining yet
functional, was an obvious vehicle.
Benna dealt with the bawdy, the scandalous, the cruel and
occasionally the humorous. Benna provided slaves with a common
voice. In the 1900's, benna evolved to becoming the newspaper
of the people and provided an often illiterate population with
rapid transmission of information. The earliest traceable
record of Benna song states, "Emancipation day is past, massa
done cut naygra ass."
In the 1940's and 1950's, a fearless character, John Thomas
called "Quarkoo", sang "Benna". He composed and sang on the
spot. His songs gave details of events ranging from the
gruesome murders and courthouse trials to scandalous
husband/wife infidelities of the upper and middle classes in
the society. Some of the lyrics to his songs landed him in
prison. (Desmond Nicholson, "From
Benna 1834 to Calypso 1985," Museum of Antigua and
Barbuda)
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4 dasheen: taro
5 doukona: plantain
pudding
5 pepper pot: a
spicy West Indian stew
Writing
[...] I write out of my autobiographical experience, and part of the
experience I've had definitely being a black woman, being black, being a
woman [...] You know, a lot of times my work is criticized as being angry. I
will just describe, for instance, society in a place like Antigua, which is
very dependent on tourism. And I describe that situation in a book I wrote
about it—an "angry book." I didn't think it was angry. I was just describing
something. But I think because I am a black woman, people have difficulties
with people who are black, and people who are women, and sometimes when the
two get together, they have double difficulties. (463–64)
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. (468)
Jamaica
Kincaid: [...] The sound of words in a novel is a pretty amazing
thing, and I am concerned with the sound of every word I write. When I was
writing about the geology of the place, I could have chosen any number of
words. But I chose geological terms, because I love how they sound. It
drives me a little bit crazy that people who write about this book don’t
understand: it’s all very carefully constructed.
But you know, I have to say in defense of my little books, that over time
they gain an understanding that they don’t have on first being issued.
It’s shocking to me how much that first story, “Girl,” is reproduced and
anthologized now. When it was published, the first and only person to
recognize anything significant about it was the person who published it.
No one else seemed to care about it. Now, there are some other people who
see significance there. So whenever I think of how misunderstood this book
has been, I remember the history of my writing, and the reception it gets.
—Lauren
K. Alleyne, "Does
Truth Have a Tone?: Lauren K. Alleyne Interviews Jamaica Kincaid," Guernica (2013)
I was forced to
memorize John Milton and that was a very painful thing. But I’m not going
to make myself forget John Milton because it involves a painful thing. I
find John Milton very beautiful, and I’m glad that I know it. I’m sorry
that the circumstances of how I got to know it were so horrid, but, since
I know it, I know it and I claim every right to use it.
[...]
I wrote many very
weird “Talk” stories that appeared in The
New Yorker, very experimental “Talk” stories, and it was from
them that I learned how to do the stories in At
the Bottom of the River. Sometimes I was doing both; I was
writing weird stories and I was writing At
the Bottom of the River.
[...]
I liked to
investigate my own life. I liked to talk about my mother, her family, my
life, what happened to me, historically, in my childhood, and I could only
get to them in this way.
—Kay
Bonetti, "Interview
with Jamaica Kincaid," The
Missouri Review (2002)
Childhood
I
would go to that library every Saturday afternoon—the last stop on my
Saturday-afternoon round of things to do (I would save this for last, for
it was the thing I liked to do best)—and sit and look at books and think
about the misery in being me (I was a child and what is a child if not
someone full of herself or himself), whom I loved, whom I did not love,
who I only just liked, and so on.
—Jamaica
Kincaid, A Small Place (New
York: Plume, 1989): 45.
Mother
My mother used to tell me a lot of things about herself. It’s perhaps
one of the ways in which I became a writer.
[...]
Bonetti: Have you come to the
point in your life where you’re comfortable with the enriching things
about you that come from your mother?
Kincaid: Absolutely. There are
many things about her that I’ve consciously tried to adopt, that I love.
Sometimes I only write in her voice. I think the voice of Lucy is very
much her voice. Her voice as a piece of literature is the most fabulous
thing you ever read or heard. She is a person in her own right, but
careless with her gifts. That’s very painful to me to watch.
Bonetti: How do you mean that?
Kincaid: I perhaps am a writer
because of her, in a very specific way. For instance, I love books
because of her. She gave me an Oxford dictionary for my seventh
birthday. She had taught me to read when I was three-and-a-half years
old. There are many things that should have allowed her to free herself
from her situation, and perhaps one of them would have been to have no
children at all, including me. But you see her with these marvelous
gifts and sense of self—people who have less of this than her have done
things, ruled the world for instance. She’s in her seventies and she’s
quite something. If she roused herself she could do quite a bit.
Bonetti: Have you ever felt that
a part of why you write is to win your mother’s approval?
Kincaid: When I first started
among the things I wanted to do was to say, “Aren’t you sorry that no
greater effort was made over my education? Or over my life?” But as I’ve
gotten older I am fairly sure that that’s not a part of my life anymore.
I didn’t see her for twenty years, so the desire for her approval was
greater in her absence. Then as we saw each other and spoke, I realized
there was a certain chasm that could not really be closed; I just grew
to accept her. I also wanted my children to know my mother, because
whatever my differences are with her, I wanted them to feel a part of
this person, and if possible to realize that some of the dynamics in my
life were related. I didn’t want her to die without closing that circle.
What distinguished my life from my brother's is that my mother didn't
like me. When I became a woman, I seemed to repel her. I had to learn to
fend for myself. I found a way to rescue myself.
Culture
And what is culture, anyway? In some places, it's the way they play drums;
in other places, it's the way you behave out in public; and in still other
places, it's just the way a person cooks food.
—Jamaica Kincaid, A
Small Place (New York: Plume, 1989): 45.
I become aware of
the influence of the things I read as a child—images
from Christian mythology and Paradise
Lost. All of this has left me very uncomfortable with ambiguity.
My sense of the world is that things are right and wrong, and that when
you’re wrong, you get thrown into a dark pit and you pay forever. You try
very hard not to do a wrong thing, and if you do, there’s very little
forgiveness. I was brought up to understand that English traditions were
right and mine were wrong. Within the life of an English person there was
always clarity, and within an English culture there was always clarity,
but within my life and culture was ambiguity. A person who is dead in
England is dead. A person where I come from who is dead might not be dead.
I was taught to think of ambiguity as magic, a shadiness and an
illegitimacy, not the real thing of Western civilization.
—Kay
Bonetti, "Interview
with Jamaica Kincaid," The
Missouri Review (2002)
Race
Jamaica Kincaid: “Race.” I really
can’t understand it as anything other than something people say. The people
who have said that you and I are both “black” and therefore deserve a
certain kind of interaction with the world, they make race. I can’t take
them seriously. Not beyond the fact that they have the ability to say that
you and I are a single race. You know, a piece of cloth that is called
“linen” has more validity than calling you and me “black” or “negro.”
“Cotton” has more validity as cotton than yours and my being “black.” It is
true that our skin is sort of more or less the same shade. But is it true
that our skin color makes us a distinctive race? No.
The people who invented race, who grouped us together as “black,” were
inventing and categorizing their ability to do something vicious and wrong.
I don’t see why I have to give them validity, or why I have to approach that
label with any kind of seriousness. We give the people who make this
category too much legitimacy by accepting it. We give them too much power.
They ought to be left with the tawdriness of it, the stupidity of it. It’s a
way of organizing a wrong thing, it’s a way of making a wrong thing easy.
It’s too easy to say this or that is “race,” and that has been a vehicle for
an incredible amount of wrong in the world.
Guernica: And yet your work is often
described as dealing with race.
Jamaica Kincaid: Yes. And race as a
subject only comes about because of what I look like. If I say something
truthfully, people say “Oh, she’s so angry.” If I write about a married
person who lives in Vermont, it becomes “Oh, she’s autobiographical.” Norman
Mailer stabbed his wife, and was not ever described as angry, and nothing he
wrote was ever described as autobiographical. And all of these things are,
in some sense, ways of diminishing my efforts.
If I describe a person’s physical appearance in my writing, which I often
do, especially in fiction, I never say someone is “black” or “white.” I may
describe the color of their skin—black eyes, beige skin, blue eyes, dark
skin, etc. But I’m not talking about race. I’m talking about a description.
What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the
different ways human beings organize the two.
—Lauren
K. Alleyne, "Does
Truth Have a Tone?: Lauren K. Alleyne Interviews Jamaica Kincaid," Guernica (2013)
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Comprehension
Check
- What does walking bareheaded
mean?
- What are "little cloths"?
- What is Sunday school?
- What does "throw away a child"
mean?
- What does making ends meet
mean?
- How old is the "girl"?
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Study
Questions
- There are two distinct voices
in this short story. Do you think the two voices are in
conversation? What do we know about the speakers from what
they say and how they say it? What do we know about their
relationship with each other?
- What
do you know about the girl from the story? In what way is
she different from the beginning to the end?
- What do you know about the
place of the story, its flora, fauna, and culture?
- In what different ways might
you categorize the structure of the story? How does this
reflect the relationship between the two characters?
- Several words and phrases
recur throughout the story. What is the connection between
the different occurrences of some of these?
- Compare words or devices used
to announce a reason.
- Compare reasons given.
- Which items listed in the
story does not include a reason?
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Vocabulary
coming of age
plot
trajectory
refrain
repetition
rhythm
pace
call and response
cadence
diction
imagery
character
characterization
motivation
setting
irony
gender roles, expectations, stereotypes
breaking gender roles, expectations, stereotypes
humor
the everyday
drama
performance
superstition
Sample Student
Responses to Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl"
Study Question:
Response 1:
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Student Name
2202234
Introduction to the Study of English Literature
Acharn Puckpan
Tipayamontri
June 21, 2010
Reading
Response 1
Title
Text.
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Reference
Kincaid, Jamaica. “Girl.” 1978. At the
Bottom of the River. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000, pp. 3–5.
Media
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- "Jamaica Kincaid on Writing, Her Life,
and The New Yorker,"
Chicago Humanities Festival (2014; 55:11 min.; Kincaid
introduces and reads "Girl" at 33:20)
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- Antigua Then, Precision Centre (2012
documentary; 9:29 min.)
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| Jamaica Kincaid |
Biography
Interviews
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Further
Reading
Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small
Place. Plume, 1988.
Kincaid, Jamaica. At the
Bottom of the River. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
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Last updated January 9, 2019