Summary Of Jamaica Kinkaid's Poem Girl

Often when you see something in a culture that is so starkly different from your own you often shudder at the thought or the actions. But often when it involves things that we notice as part of our own culture we are left even wondering more about it than if it was something of its own. This is seen a lot with religious things since we often think that everyone should completely submit to our way of thinking and our ideals. So when we see those same ideals mixed with people’s original ideals we are often left scrambling. We see this in Jamaica Kinkaid’s poem Girl. There are parts of it that we can easily see where the girl has changed her ways to fit the religion that has been pushed on her but we still see somethings that are from the days …show more content…
This is once more the idea of spirits- bad ones at that- may be just in the shape of the blackbird and if a stone would hit it would want to come and do bad things to the thrower and their family. Again a quick search of the bible and the Christian faith we won’t see any mention of this or birds but it is still something that is passed down from mother to daughter and so on. It is interesting that they meld things like this so easily into the new religion. It would be much harder to push this out as it is a part of the advice that is seemingly given to the girl. So while they talk about how to do things in a very English way when it comes to some things they are still very much interested in what could be thought of as the old religion. To the mother and girl these spirits are still there and can still be angered even if the book they now look to for religion has no mention of spirits, good or evil, and actually talks about how there are no such