Language and Postcolonialism

Like much of Kincaid’s early fiction, “Girl” recreates the world of a young girl, focusing on the nuances and rhythms of Caribbean English. This evocation of the speech of the islands is reminiscent of other Caribbean writers such as Derek Walcott of St. Lucia and Edward Kamau Brathwaite of Barbados, whose stories have also been compared to prose poems. Kincaid’s work has found its place within the English tradition of anticolonial travel writing, a tradition stretching back to Jonathan Swift’s mercilessly satirical writings on Ireland in the eighteenth century.

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