Girl By Jamaica Kincaid

This author is best known for her fiction materials, but she does a lot essays and poems in non-fiction. Jamaica Kincaid poems can also be referred to as short stories and often reflects family lives and of her native island of Antigua. Girl by Jamaica Kincaid is considered one of her best works.

In the year 1978 she published what could be classified as poem or short story called “Girl”. This was published in The New Yorker and later she had a majority of short stories that also appeared in this magazine.

She later did a collection of short stories in the year 1983 and “Girl” was featured as the first part of the book. This book was the first of many and it was called “At the Bottom of the River”; contained a series of stories that drew a lot of attention to her work.

When Kincaid did “Girl” most persons said that the poem reflected her own life and relationship with her mother. The family practices of the Western Caribbean was deeply imbedded in the text that was considered perplexing; it depicted family togetherness and love by creating small images of her native island.

If this poem is examined thoroughly one could decipher the text as little glimpses into the life of a woman from the Caribbean island who was trying to instill moral principles and cultural practices to her daughter.

This poem could be described as a catalog of advice that a mother would constantly give to a young daughter. There is also the series of orders that the daughter would constantly get to keep her from becoming a common girl or to put it more bluntly a slut. When you read this poem you can easily detect that most of these commands were handed down from many generations.

This also shows how loving and tight knit the family structure was and also indicates the close bond that the mother and daughter shared. It is a popular cry among the young girls in society when a mother is always enforcing rules and guidelines; but in this poem it is clear that they are also necessary tools to ensure that survival is a must for her daughter in your adult life.

There are times in this story that you would get the impression that the mother only gives advice out of duty and not love. But if you understand it from a West Indian point of view, the mother is only using and repeating those quotes the way how it was imparted on her as a child.

Some persons see it as hostility and opposition that a female in the family has to suffer. Then, you have other readers who will highlight that it is only normal for a mother to try and properly train her daughter in the way a lady would act in their culture. This is seen as an indication of strong family love based on the ethical principles and rules that the mother was passing along.

Jamaica Kincaid poems definitely open a lot discussion with her style of writing and how she interprets and portrays certain issues. When analyzing most of this poem you have to take it piece by piece and if you love to learn about different cultures you will find it enjoyable and not burdensome as many readers.

One also has to understand that many women had to learn lessons of life in rigid ways and this would constantly be passed on to future generations in a similar manner. The phrases that were not liked by many was the constant hints of the daughter turning out to be a slut, this is said to create hostility in the family life.