Immigration in the US essays

Immigration in the US essays Girl" was first published in 1983 in At the Bottom of the River, a collection of stories which won the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. "Girl" is a short piece that shows the dialogue between an older woman and a younger girl, probably a mother and her adolescent daughter. In the piece, the mother instructs her daughter on many subjects, from cooking and cleaning to social skills and love. Despite its brevity, "Girl" is a work which accurately and intimately portrays a mother-daughter relationship and The title of the piece, "Girl", is an integral part of the work itself. The title serves several purposes. First, the title represents the age of the daughter. She is not a woman, not yet on her own, but a girl, still dependent on another, still with much to learn. Second, the title represents the mother's perception of her daughter. She does not consider her a woman or a young lady, but a naive girl in need of constant instruction and supervision. A third purpose of the title is that it represents the daughter's struggle to find her own emerging identity in the shadow of her mother and the shadow of the identity her mother wants her to take on. She is not named in the piece, nor is her place defined; she is not "daughter", "sister", "mother", or "wife", but "girl". "Girl" depicts the mother-daughter relationship that appears when the daughter reaches adolescence, a time of great change in the relationship. Kincaid uses Caribbean idioms and speech patterns to lend realism to the dialogue. The dialogue borders on monologue on the part of the mother. The girl is hardly able to squeeze in a word, having only two brief sentences in the entire work. Very likely, however, this is not even one speech by the mother, but a compilation of several bits of advice. To the daughter's ears, the plethora of advice and rules ...