- I recognized this as something I read in my English 100 class from the beginning of the first sentence
- The story is told as one really long sentence.
- "Wash the white clothes on Monday" and "was the color clothes on Tuesday" (1145)
- The story is Kincaid's unusual way of portraying all of the pressure she was under growing up as a girl. There were a lot of expectations and things she was supposed to know how to do. As a girl, there are household chores and she's expected to know how to do them before of the fact that she's a girl.
- "on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming" (1145)
- "you mustn't speak to wharf-rat boys" (1145)
- "this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a buttonhole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming" (1146)
- "this is how to behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well, and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming" (1146)
- "what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?" (1146)
- There's a large focus throughout this short reading on girls not becoming "sluts." While I can see this as the parents just trying to set their daughter on the right path, it's written in a way that reveals it as more of an assumption than a worry. It's not "don't become a slut" it's "the slut you are so bent on becoming" (1146). The parent is assuming their daughter is going to become a slut which I think shows little trust between the two of them and it comes off as being very condescending.
"Death Constant Beyond Love" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Senator Onesimo found the love of his life six months before his death (988)
- He was married to a German woman and had five kids. (988)
- He was told that he would be dead by next Christmas (988)
- Nelson Farina didn't greet the senator (989)
- Nelson Farina had begged for Senator Onesimo Sanchez's help in getting a false identity card since the senator's first electoral campaign (990)
- The senator refused (990)
- A woman asked him for a donkey and the senator said "All right, you'll get your donkey" (990)
- He got her a donkey and made other smaller gestures like giving a spoonful of medicine to a sick man (990)
- Nelson Farina dressed his daughter up in her best clothes and sent her to the senator (991)
- The senator stood in the doorway of the meeting room and saw Laura when the vestibule was empty. She told him her father sent her. He thought she was beautiful and told her to come in. (991)
- "Thousands of bank notes were floating in the air, flapping like the butterfly. But the senator turned off the fan and the bills were left without air and alighted on the objects in the room" (992)
- "You see, even shit can fly" (992)
- The senator told Laura that she's just a child. She responded that she turns nineteen in April (992)
- "She was naked under her dress" (992)
- Laura was wearing a chastity belt (992)
- Her dad had the key (993)
- Her dad wanted Laura to tell the senator to send one of his people to get it and a written promise than he'd straighten out the situation" (993)
- Laura's heard that the senator is "worse than the rest because you're different" (993)
- The senator said for Laura to tell her "son of a bitch of a father that I'll straighten out his situation" (993)
- He told her to forget about the key and wanted her to sleep with him for a while because "it's good to be with someone when you're so alone" (993)
Kincaid, Jamaica. "Girl." The Norton Anthology World Literature, edited by Martin Puchner, Third Edition, vol. F, W. W. Norton 2012, pp. 1144-1146
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. "Death Constant Beyond Love." The Norton Anthology World Literature, edited by Martin Puchner, Third Edition, vol. F, W. W. Norton 2012, pp. 986-992
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