“Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid is an unconventional text that portrays a mother’s list of rules that her daughter must obey in order to be accepted in society. When I first read this narrative I read it as a resistant reader, having little to no knowledge about what culture, time period or what the real meaning of this list was. I did know however that it has some link to womanhood and how a woman must portray herself to the outside world.
When I first read “girl” I initially interpreted it as an outline of what a women in this society and how easy it is to be portrayed as a “slut”. This coming from my own cultural views (middle class Australian) where if a girl wore a particular type of clothing, said the wrong thing, or even seen with …show more content…
Miranda, who knows a lot about Jamaican and Caribbean culture, explained the cultural connections. That salt fish was traditional Jamaican quinine and Miranda used her personal history to identify these cultural features. The line “ don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all;” puzzled me. I had no idea what the writer meant about it might not be a blackbird at all. Thomas used his literary repertoire to connect this puzzling line with a scene out of “To kill a mockingbird”. He said that in “To kill a mockingbird” there was a scene referring to how killing a blackbird is ok but to be careful when killing them, they could be a mockingbird. To kill a mockingbird is unethical but to kill a blackbird is acceptable. These suggestions from class discussions gave me a deeper understanding of the text. That there was more to this text then just rules or instructions from a mother to her daughter. Anita also suggested that maybe it is not in the mother voice at all. That maybe it is the daughter mocking her mother. This could explain the line “this is how you spit in the air if you feel like”. Yet being the tutor she does have an intellectual advantage. Being a rather stubborn person listening to other people’s views, I originally thought that this would be hard. However listening to other people’s views gave me great perspective on the reading and allowed my cultural knowledge to
When I first read “girl” I initially interpreted it as an outline of what a women in this society and how easy it is to be portrayed as a “slut”. This coming from my own cultural views (middle class Australian) where if a girl wore a particular type of clothing, said the wrong thing, or even seen with …show more content…
Miranda, who knows a lot about Jamaican and Caribbean culture, explained the cultural connections. That salt fish was traditional Jamaican quinine and Miranda used her personal history to identify these cultural features. The line “ don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all;” puzzled me. I had no idea what the writer meant about it might not be a blackbird at all. Thomas used his literary repertoire to connect this puzzling line with a scene out of “To kill a mockingbird”. He said that in “To kill a mockingbird” there was a scene referring to how killing a blackbird is ok but to be careful when killing them, they could be a mockingbird. To kill a mockingbird is unethical but to kill a blackbird is acceptable. These suggestions from class discussions gave me a deeper understanding of the text. That there was more to this text then just rules or instructions from a mother to her daughter. Anita also suggested that maybe it is not in the mother voice at all. That maybe it is the daughter mocking her mother. This could explain the line “this is how you spit in the air if you feel like”. Yet being the tutor she does have an intellectual advantage. Being a rather stubborn person listening to other people’s views, I originally thought that this would be hard. However listening to other people’s views gave me great perspective on the reading and allowed my cultural knowledge to