Examining Double Colonization and Subalternity in Jamaica Kincaid's Girl through a Postcolonial Feminist Perspective

Year 2024, Volume: 11 Issue: 1, 500 - 512, 02.04.2024

Kanan Aghasıyev

https://doi.org/10.46868/atdd.2024.668

Abstract

This article’s focus is Antiguan American writer Jamaica Kincaid’s short story Girl. The story is also known as a poem since it is written in a poetic shape. The story was published by The New York Times for the first time in 1978, and then later it was published in a book named At the Bottom of the River in 1983, alongside many other stories by Kincaid. Girl talks about a relationship between a mother and a daughter in a colonial society. In Girl, readers can see how a mother teaches her daughter about her duties as a woman and a future wife. The piece has always been seen as either a postcolonial or feminist literary piece, rather than being a postcolonial feminist work. However, in this article, I claim that Kincaid’s prose poem is a postcolonial feminist literary work that depicts the struggle of women in the colonized Antiguan society. I focus on postcolonial feminist concepts such as subalterns’ voices and the concept of women’s double colonization by giving related examples from Kincaid’s Girl.

Keywords

Jamaica Kincaid, Postcolonial Feminism, Subalternity, Double Colonialism, Patriarchy

References

• Archivist. (2017, April 10). Interview with Jamaica Kincaid | The Missouri Review. The Mis-souri Review. https://missourireview.com/article/interview-with-jamaica-kincaid/
• Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. Psychology Press.
• Chicago Humanities Festival. (2014, October 29). Jamaica Kincaid on writing, her life, and The New Yorker [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPgjWIYKm5w
• Clarke, E. (2021). My Mother Who Fathered Me. In Duke University Press eBooks (pp. 248–252). https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1mnmx3x.74
• Danielson, Virginia, Scott Marcus, and Dwight Reynolds. The Garland encyclopedia of world music. Taylor & Francis, 2017.
• Gregg, V. M. (2005). Caribbean Women: An Anthology of Non-fiction Writing, 1890-1980.
• Kincaid, J. (1978, June 19). “Girl,” by Jamaica Kincaid. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1978/06/26/girl
• Kincaid, J. (1984). At the Bottom of the River. (?).
• Kincaid, J. (1985). Annie John. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Kras, S. L., & Nevins, D. (2021). Antigua and Barbuda (Cultures of the World) (3rd ed.). Cav-endish Square.
• Lakshmi, J., and J. Jayachandran. Mother The Agent Of Patrıarchy: Wıth Reference To Jama-ıca Kıncaıd’s Short Story “Gırl. The Mannar Scroll: 69.
• Lorde, A. (1984). The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. In Sister Out-sider: Essays and Speeches (pp. 110-114). Crossing Press.
• Mohanty, C. T. (1984). Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Feminist Review, 30 (1), 61-88.
• Nichols, G. (1984). The Fat Black Woman’s Poems. Virago Press.
• Petersen, K. H., & Rutherford, A. (1986). A Double Colonization: Colonial and Post-colonial Women’s Writing. Mundelstrup, Dangaroo Press.
• Spivak, G. C. (2022). Can the Subaltern Speak? In Routledge e-Books (pp.171–219). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003101536-9
• Van Herk, A. (1985). A Gentle Circumcision. (2), 43-49. Retrieved from https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol7/iss2/10