This is another voice-driven story in which a mother harangues her daughter about how to behave. It’s not a realistic scene, but rather a collection of many moments from a mother-daughter relationship as the girl begins to move from childhood to adolescence. The mother is fierce and threatening: “on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming.” But we begin to see that she is trying to warn her daughter, to protect her from hardships she herself has suffered. Indirectly, we can’t help piecing together a picture of a wider village community: recipes, superstitions, prejudices, traditions and fears. The girl tries to object but the mother ploughs on.
First published in The New Yorker in June 1978 and available to subscribers to read here
A Personal Anthology 