Girl

by Jamaica Kincaid [|Full Story] This short story is a unique one, being at that it's just one sentence, with each "sub"sentence being separated by a semicolon.

This story is about, through my interpretation, a mother, probably African American and Catholic, showing her daughter how to do certain things and how to be accepted as a woman or a wife. It is also about what not to do, and how to not be considered a whore and a bad person. Its just the mom saying how she thinks her daughter should act in order to have the best life possible for her. This story is a description of a mother giving her daughter life lessons to live by or it could be the daughter thinking about what her mother is saying to her and she is just repeating the whole thing in her head over and over again. During the story two lines stand out. "this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming"- This means; if you hem the dress wrong, you look like a slut. "you mean to say after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread"- This is the last line in the story, basically it means.... you're a total slut. **Some words to know or look up** - wharf: a level of quayside area to which a ship may be moored to load or unload. - benna: a genre of Antiguan folk music. - doukona: a spicy Caribbean dish. - okra- a plant of the mallow family with long ridged seedpods. - dasheon - pepper pot- a British term for pepper shaker