Mothers and Daughters

Like much of Kincaid's fiction, "Girl" is an examination of the relationship between the "girl" of the title and her mother. The mother's instruction to "soak your little cloths right after you take them off" refers to the cloths woman in many parts of the world use to absorb their menstrual flow and indicate that the girl is a young adolescent. Kincaid has said that all of her fiction is based on autobiography, and that her own relationship with her mother has been difficult since Kincaid was nine years old. In an interview with Selwyn R. Cudjoe she explains, "the fertile soil of my creative life is my mother. When I write, in some things I use my mother's voice, because I like my mother's voice. . . . I feel I would have no creative life or no real interest in art without my mother. It's really my...