I love Jamaica Kincaid’s work, and I particularly love this story. It is a To Do list from mother to daughter, and in one long sentence Kincaid sums up all of the concerns of a girl moving from adolescence to womanhood. The tone is hectoring and loving at the same time (although mainly hectoring, to be fair). The story is a mix of instructions and warnings. The mother is bossy and exacting, both domestically:
“Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don’t walk bare-head in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil;”
And about relationships:
“…this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up;”
But the story is also funny and joyous:
“…this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn’t fall on you;”
Kincaid manages to convey the whole of life on one page, in 650 words, a miracle of compression, voice and character. She also gives us a cracking final line.
I was thrilled to be able to go and hear Kincaid speak a couple of years ago, on one of her rare visits to the UK. She talked about her garden, her writing and her life and I have rarely felt as enriched as I did at the end of her session. Suffice it to say I’m a bit of a super-fan.
First published in The New Yorker, 26 June 1978 issue, and available to read here; collected At the Bottom of the River, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983, and now Picador, 2022
A Personal Anthology 