One great short story to read today: Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl”
According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, for the second year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free* to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we recommend:
“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about narrative compression in fiction. How do (some) writers manage to pack a full emotional wallop into just a few paragraphs? Or vividly capture an entire experience? Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl,” published in The New Yorker in 1978, manages to do both these things. Structured like a to-do list and narrated in a hectoring maternal voice that vacillates between judgmental and caring, this single sentence story carries the reader through—well—all the concerns of a girlhood. Here’s my favorite section, towards the end:
“…this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn’t fall on you…”
I go back to this one page(!) piece because it holds a universe of wisdom in its tiny hands. The casual profundity breaks my heart. Yet our narrator’s so witty, so matter-of-fact about the perils and pleasures of womanhood. Her litany of reminders remind me of every mother figure I’ve ever known. Which is fitting, given the weekend ahead.
Give it a read! (Then if you can or care to, call your mom?)
The story begins:
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; don’t walk bare-head in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn’t have gum in it, because that way it won’t hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday school…
*If you hit a paywall, we recommend trying with a different/private/incognito browser (but listen, you didn’t hear it from us).
