Summary Of Girl By Jamaica Kincaid

In the excerpt “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid is an example of modernism in literature. This experimental form of writing consists of a list of suggestions on how women should carry themselves to live a happy and fulfilling life. Kincaid takes common advice that’s daughters are constantly hearing from their mothers and tie them in a series of commands that she uses in this poem. This piece represents the transfer of knowledge through a family’s history, or words of wisdom from parent to child. Seeing the way that this story is written was puzzling to me at first. What I thought was interesting about the story as well is the format by which the author wrote the story using only semicolons to separate the sentences. There is not an introduction of the characters. It starts off with a conversation and it does not even sees to follow a flow. In the beginning of the story, the narrator starts by giving her daughter basic commands and skills that she should know. She lists things like how to wash white clothing a certain way vs. colored clothing. She gives instruction on how cook, like making pumpkin fritters and even how to manage cotton before she uses it to make a nice blouse. She instructed her on how to eat

The first interruption is to assure her mother that she doesn’t sing Benna during Sunday school. The second time is when the daughter questions her mother about the baker and the bread. The mother says “always squeeze the bread to make sure it’s fresh” and the young girl responds with asking “ but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread” the mother’s response was insinuating that her young daughter would grow up to be exactly what she didn’t want to be. This piece flows through as if the little girl grew older throughout her mother list of advice. The daughter seems as an innocent little girl who’s coming into adolescent age and it time to learn the way