Girl: Jamaica Kincaid and Daughter Advice Essay

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Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” is about a mother giving her daughter advice. She tells the girl about cooking, cleaning, men, and life in general. She calls girl a “slut” rather freely through the whole story. It’s almost as if she sees her daughter becoming a slut, rather than the woman she intends her to be. “Girl” is something different then I have ever read before. It’s almost as if you’re reading a set of instructions with very few responses of the girl who is receiving them. “Girl” not only reads as a set of instructions, but also reads at a poems stand point. I did like reading it, because “Girl” was very different from anything I have ever read before. All mothers seem to have a different perspective on how they want their daughters to become. In Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” it is a mother telling girl how to cook, clean, dress appropriately, how to get a man, and gardening. She also asks girl if “it is true that you sing benna in Sunday school?” “Benna” is a West Indian’s musical genre. Girl only interrupts her mother twice. Once to defend herself telling her mother “that she does not sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school.” At the very end of the story girl asks her mother “what if the baker don’t let her feel the bread?” Through the whole time her mother is telling her you must act this way, or you must cook and clean that way, girl only interrupts the mother twice. To me this shows that girl has complete respect for her mother. Yet the mother still

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