Empoword

Additional Readings 429 I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates. The language of Between the World and Me , like Coates’s journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory. This is required reading. Untitle d 129 (A text wrestling analysis of “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid) Societal norms, as well as the skewed expectations of women in society, are in large part passed down from older generations (as well as often being enforced by older generations) to susceptible young children who are just beginning to form their own moral code. “Girl” is an unconventional poem, written by Jamaica Kincaid, that illustrates a mother’s detailed instructions on what her daughter must do in order for her to be accepted and successful in society at that time. Separated by semicolons, the mother relentlessly lists the rules and duties forced onto women at that time, never allowing her to intervene or even question what she was being told. This blind (almost mindless) list of expectations of women emphasizes the oppressed role that women are faced with, and often expected to comply with without question. As children, our morals and values are shaped not only by our own experiences, but that of our family; wisdom, along with hard life lessons that have been learned over years and generations, are passed down from a mother to child. Although the identity of the narrator is never implicitly revealed, I believe that it is a mother passing on life lessons (as bleak as they may be) to her daughter. You can see this mother-daughter relationship best in Kincaid’s concluding lines, “always squeeze bread to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread? 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?” (Kincaid 129). The italicized line signals that the daughter (or the “girl”) is speaking here. There is only one other instance in the poem where the daughter intervenes, interrupting her mother’s cascading list of teachings; early in the poem, the mother asks (or rather asserts), “is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?” and then later insists, “don’t sing benna in Sunday school” (128). Chiming in a bit late, the daughter