Girl

According to the powers that be (er, apparently according to Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network), May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, for the second year in a row, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending a single short story, free* to read online, every (work) day of the month. Why not read along with us? Today, we recommend: “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid I’ve been thinking a lot lately about narrative compression in fiction. How do (some) writers manage to pack a full emotional wallop into just a few paragraphs? Or vividly capture an entire experience? Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl,” published in The New Yorker in 1978, manages to do both these things. Structured like a to-do list and narrated in a hectoring maternal voice that vacillates between judgmental and caring, this single sentence story carries the reader through—well—all the concerns of a girlhood. Here’s my favorite ...