Girl by Jamaica Kincaid

[Click on the title of the blog to download an audio file of me reading the story.]

How can you tell that a mother loves her daughter?

"Girl" is a mother's stream of commands and instruction that fill up a single page interrupted by just two lines spoken by her daughter. It is a story about the tension between mothers and daughters and the deep misunderstandings that sometimes occur. Inserted among the warnings and the helpful houshold hints, is the knowledge of a woman's sadness and her burdens; of how to love a difficult man and how to get rid of an unwanted baby before it is born. It's a story that has to be read aloud so you can hear the cadence of the islanders, smell the cooking of Antigua, imagine the jumbled tapestry of life in town, feel the mother's strength and read the words that open up a new world. Antigua is strange and yet familiar: benna must be a song, doukona is something edible, and dasheen is certainly a plant. I had to look them up on the internet and found that benna is indeed a genre of music, doukona is a spicy dish of the island, and dasheen is taro (called pheuak in Thai).

The story ends where it begins. The mother's last instruction is to squeeze a loaf of bread to see if it is fresh. The girl asks plaintively "What if the baker won't let me feel the bread?" The mother pauses for a moment. " You mean to say," she demands, "you are really going to become the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?" At the very last, "Girl" is a circular story that breaks the endless tension in mother-daughter relationships with wry humor.

[At the bottom of this page you can listen to a sample of reggae music.]