Girl

Fiction Responding to Fiction: Jamaica Kincaid and Bret Anthony Johnston
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Fiction Responding to Fiction: Jamaica Kincaid and Bret Anthony Johnston

Bret Anthony Johnston’s “Boy” is very much an homage as well as a companion piece to Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl.” The ways in which Johnston chose to mirror Kincaid’s piece show us the gender, class, and race equivalencies. Both Kincaid and Johnston are most interested in gender and the lessons passed from parent to child.

Fiction Responding to Fiction: Jamaica Kincaid and John Keene (and Edgar Degas)

Fiction Responding to Fiction: Jamaica Kincaid and John Keene (and Edgar Degas)

Jamaica Kincaid’s classic story “Girl,” first published in the New Yorker in 1978, is a small gem, consisting of less than 700 perfectly chosen words. We can see the echoes of Kincaid in John Keene’s story “Acrobatique” even though the story was not written intentionally to respond.