Girl

What effect do the intermittent Caribbean terms thrown into the text have on readers? What intended effect may Kincaid have been going for in using them?

What effect does the syntax used in the text have on the reader’s experience? How does the syntax affect the text’s message or meaning?

What are the gender and social dynamics that contextualize Kincaid’s work? Where can you see them represented in the text? What are the mother’s views on these social and gender dynamics?

How would the text be different if readers weren’t given the italicized portions representing the responses to the speaker? How does their inclusion characterize the daughter?

Is the speaker indeed the voice of the mother, or is it the daughter remembering what her mother has told her? How does the possible change in persona affect how we analyze and interpret the text?

How would you characterize the mother-daughter relationship portrayed in the text, and how does it differ from your own cultural view of this type of relationship?

How does the concept of domesticity and women’s work represented in Kincaid’s text differ from that of your own place and time? What is the same? What has changed?

In the style of Kincaid’s text using a list of commands and instructions, write your own list of steps indicating how a girl becomes a woman, or how a boy becomes a man. What items in the list are similar to what Kincaid’s speaker conveys? Which items are drastically different?