| "Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry..." — Girl, Jamaica Kincaid |
I stumbled across the Girl sometime last year in The New Yorker archives. The lead-off short story of the collection within At the Bottom of the River is a lyrical, dizzying list of demands from a mother to her daughter: domestic chores multiply and hang on like nagging reminders, repeating and piling on. Then, slipped in come warnings of men and instructions on social posturing. And a cutting, ugly word—slut—that causes me to flinch.
It's a pejorative, hurtful word that sears the girl like a cattle brand due to Kincaid's contrast with the barrage of domestic instructions and chores. It aims to trap, to reduce, and to induce guilt. That would be bad enough, but Kincaid's brilliant final line, a question about the girl's inability to use her sexuality as a tool with the baker, is the cherry on top of the commandments and castigations.
The nine other short stories of At the Bottom of the River explore these themes of motherhood and adolescence, sexuality, and cultural divides—all in a brilliant lyrical style that feels equally whimsical, grave, and foreign. [JG]
It's a pejorative, hurtful word that sears the girl like a cattle brand due to Kincaid's contrast with the barrage of domestic instructions and chores. It aims to trap, to reduce, and to induce guilt. That would be bad enough, but Kincaid's brilliant final line, a question about the girl's inability to use her sexuality as a tool with the baker, is the cherry on top of the commandments and castigations.
The nine other short stories of At the Bottom of the River explore these themes of motherhood and adolescence, sexuality, and cultural divides—all in a brilliant lyrical style that feels equally whimsical, grave, and foreign. [JG]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
| Jamaica Kincaid was born in St. John's, Antigua in the West Indies. She was a staff writer for The New Yorker in the '70s and '80s. Her stories have appeared in Rolling Stone and The Paris Review. At the Bottom of the River is her first book. She also wrote a semi-biographical novella, Annie John, and many others since then. She lives in Bennington, Vermont. |
| "Is life, then, a violent burst of light, like flint struck sharply in the dark." — Girl, Jamaica Kincaid |
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