"Girl"
By: Jamaica Kincaid
I ended up reading this story a couple of times to get a little understanding of it. The author Jamaica Kincaid doesn't introduce any characters in this short story. It was more of a list of instructions that a mother would tell her child over and over. As I read this story I could see myself telling my children what to do and not what to do, except for the "slut" part.
The mother is trying to teach a young girl on how to become a respectable woman. As I read I wondered if this was more a story about the author as a young girl or the women she knew growing up. As the mother is teaching the young girl all these life lessons she adds in several times a statement about "not like the slut you are so bent on becoming" which made me think the girl has been in trouble with this kind of situation before. Also when the mother tells here how to make medicine to get rid of a child before it becomes a child. Has the young girl become pregnant because of her actions, or is the mother trying to prepare her for something that might happen in the future if she doesn't change her ways?
At the end of the story the mother tells her how to test for fresh bread. The girl asked what to do if the baker won't let her touch it. The mother seems like there is nothing more she can do for the girl because after all the things she has told her about becoming a woman the girl is not going to use any of them.
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