Blog Post #10 - From "Girl" to "Boy"

Assignment: In Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl," we have a story that does not have a conventional structure. We are missing fiction elements like plot, character development, and setting. We have a story featuring all dialogue (though there aren't the conventional markers of dialogue, like indenting with each speaker or quotation marks). The dialogue is primarily spoken by a mother who is delivering advice to her daughter.  It seems that the advice is broken up into:

• homemaking skills (cleaning,cooking, sewing, etc.)
• manners
• morals
• how to carry on relations with the opposite sex
• social conventions
• accusations

Via this mainly one-person dialogue (the daughter is only heard 2 times), we get a sense of the setting, Antigua. We get a sense of the relationship between the mother and daughter. And we get a sense of conflict (whether the daughter is or isn't a slut). There are also plenty of implicit lessons about what it means to be a female within this setting.

For this assignment, I'd like you to write an imitation in which you have a mother or father deliver similar instructions/advice to a son. Rather than Antigua, set your story in the U.S. What sorts of practical skills would a boy need to have? What sorts of manners would his mom/dad call for?  What advice would the mother or father give regarding how to interact with the opposite sex? Finally, I'd like for your set of instructions/advice to have its own hidden conflict. Be sure to have a strand of similar worries that come out in the mother or father's advice.

A successful imitation will give a sense of the setting (is it suburban or rural, big city or small?) A successful imitation will give the reader a sense of the relationship between the parent and the son. A successful imitation will imply lessons about what it means to be a boy or young man in the U.S. in 2013. Finally, it will provide the conflict that is necessary to any piece of fiction.