Tiffany James- English 145

J amaica Kincaid rose from humble beginnings to become a successful contemporary writer, well known for her books and magazine articles about the immigrant experience. Kincaid learned the practice of voodoo from her mother and grandmother, which she later incorporated into her fiction. Her family, because Kincaid was a girl, no value was placed on her gifts. We see this played out in the story of “ Girl ”. The story starts off with what appears to be a mother instruction to a daughter coming into womanhood indicating that she has started her period (white clothes). It is also a warning because it appears that the mother is concerned about the daughter’s behavior, “on Sunday’s try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming” (1146). She is questioning her daughter’s choice of music, accusing her rather. The daughter reply lets readers know that she is not who the mother perceives her to be. She has enough respect for herself to not sing benna (music full of...

Leslie Marmon Silko was a native American novelist, poet, memoirist, and writer.   She is known for her short stories, which, “Yellow Woman,” is one of Silko’s shortest and earliest pieces, but it occupies a still growing place in the canon of short fiction. The story of Yellow women moves from reality to myth. The story opens with the narrator, speaking in first person, waking up by the river next to a strange man that it seems apparent she has been sexually intimate with. Yet, she is smitten by him. She is trying to make sense of why she had spent the night with him.   Silva recalls that during the night when they were love making she suggested that he must be an ancestral spirit and she must be Yellow Woman. The author only hoped that the ancient story her grandfather told her was true because she could make sense of why she, as a married woman with children  had an affair with a stranger she met along her walk. Or it could be she secretly desires to live out the m...