“Do your laundry, wash the dishes, cook for us once in a while!” Those are some of the things I remember hearing from my mother often while growing up, and things I occasionally resented hearing about as well. Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl is a short story featuring what appears to be a mother explaining to her daughter what would make her a respectable woman in their culture. She tells her daughter how to be perfect to help her daughter have a good reputation in their community and live a pretty straight and narrow path. Yet, Girl also goes much deeper by using the instructions given by the mother to her daughter as a way to analyze and give insight into their culture. Girl is a set of instructions from mother to daughter that reflects upon the
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Given that Jamaica Kincaid is a woman from the British West Indies, it makes sense that this would be in her writing given that most of her works give voice to women from the West Indies in various ways. One of the most prime examples of postcolonial theory in Girl is the usage of a simple word, ‘slut’. Slut is a word used to describe women and girls with loose sexual morals and is first seen in Middle English literature (Harper). Nowadays, ‘sluts’ are considered women who don’t deserve respect and are looked down upon, a fate the mother in Girl was trying to prevent for her daughter. This fear of female sexuality is something many colonial powers introduced to colonized countries along with Christianity and other forms of respectability politics that many colonial powers felt that indigenous ‘savages’ lacked because of their difference in culture. The usage of the word slut here is interesting because it’s an English word and not traditional …show more content…
It tackled me in a way that made me really relate as a young girl with a mom who believed domestic labor to be key in being a proper woman, and a girl from a previously colonized country as well. I related to this reading the most because back home, being great at domestic labor makes you a woman and I feel that I always fought against that a bit. I wanted to go out and play like the boys or take a nap, not clean after everyone in my house and cook for my sometimes critical parents. Also, like the girl in the story, I never really understood why all of this happened to make me respectable, I also had questions that were also glossed over and felt confused by some of what I was told as well. All in all, Girl is a relatable poem while also maintaining critical elements that help shape our view into the author’s life and
Given that Jamaica Kincaid is a woman from the British West Indies, it makes sense that this would be in her writing given that most of her works give voice to women from the West Indies in various ways. One of the most prime examples of postcolonial theory in Girl is the usage of a simple word, ‘slut’. Slut is a word used to describe women and girls with loose sexual morals and is first seen in Middle English literature (Harper). Nowadays, ‘sluts’ are considered women who don’t deserve respect and are looked down upon, a fate the mother in Girl was trying to prevent for her daughter. This fear of female sexuality is something many colonial powers introduced to colonized countries along with Christianity and other forms of respectability politics that many colonial powers felt that indigenous ‘savages’ lacked because of their difference in culture. The usage of the word slut here is interesting because it’s an English word and not traditional …show more content…
It tackled me in a way that made me really relate as a young girl with a mom who believed domestic labor to be key in being a proper woman, and a girl from a previously colonized country as well. I related to this reading the most because back home, being great at domestic labor makes you a woman and I feel that I always fought against that a bit. I wanted to go out and play like the boys or take a nap, not clean after everyone in my house and cook for my sometimes critical parents. Also, like the girl in the story, I never really understood why all of this happened to make me respectable, I also had questions that were also glossed over and felt confused by some of what I was told as well. All in all, Girl is a relatable poem while also maintaining critical elements that help shape our view into the author’s life and