Zadie Smith Struggles

Struggles can be internal and or external. It can be within ones self or between an individual and or group of people. Hardships are the struggles individual go through, on a daily basis either to fit in or to reach ones goals. Struggles are due to gender, race or ethnicity, class, ability, and marginalization. We are going to be examining the works of Jamaica Kincaid “Girl”, Zadie Smith “The Girl With Bangs”, and Stephen Graham Jones “Discovering America” in order probe the different kinds of struggles the characters go through.
In Smith’s “The Girl With Bangs” the unnamed narrator struggles with gender orientation. She is a college student experimenting with a female, Charlotte. She is lusted by Charlotte’s mesmerizing bangs. Charlotte

is a hot mess; she sleeps with anyone regardless of gender.

At the beginning of the story, Charlotte is in a relationship with a man named Maurice, who she promises she would wait for as he left for Thailand to pursue his career. As soon as Maurice leaves, the narrator slowly goes after Charlotte. The narrator is tactical; she uses the fact that she is a girl to her advantage. The narrator slowly befriends Charlotte’s friends and then Charlotte. In the story it states “I became a boy for the duration. I stood under the window with my open arms. I did all the old boy tricks. These tricks are not as difficult as some boys will have you believe, but they are indeed slow, and work only by a very gradual process of accumulation.” (Zadie Smith 264) The narrator took on a male role by using their pattern of seduction to win over Charlotte. The relationship between the narrator and Charlotte lasted for eight months and in the beginning the narrator referenced the relationship as an affair, later on she went to say the relationship tore her apart. The narrator must have felt as if she did not belong in that relationship since ultimately Charlotte belonged to Maurice. Before the end of the relationship, Maurice comes back for Charlotte and finds out of the relationship between his girl and the

narrator. He confronts the narrator in a “man-to-man” macho talk; Maurice begged the narrator to let him have Charlotte. (Zadie Smith 266) The narrator agrees but when they go to tell Charlotte the decision, which Charlotte had no part in; they find her with another man. Charlotte’s lovers marginalized her because they didn’t even bother to include her in the conversation about her relationship with either person. Charlotte shaves her head to spite both the narrator and Maurice; in a way she knew all along the power her bangs had on them. Maurice decides to marry her anyways and takes her to Thailand. The narrator always believed that “one might meet some sweet kid and like them a lot – maybe even marry them – while all the time allowing that kid to sleep with other kids, and that this could be done with no fuss at all.” (Zadie Smith 263). The narrator references a life partner as kid because she never clearly knew whether she’d end up with male or female, but she knew she had the option of both. The narrator did not believe in a monogamous relationship, which allowed her to justify her relationship with Charlotte.
In Jamaica Kincaid “Girl,” the concept of the story is someone dictating to a young girl how to properly be a lady in society. This ‘someone’ I assume is the mother of the girl. The mother seems to be terrified that her daughter is so bent on becoming a ‘slut’. (Kincaid 137) In this society the role of a female is to be a proper housewife. The mother and daughter are part of the lower class because they have to wash their clothes by hand and put it on rocks to dry also, they buy their own cotton to make their own clothing. The mother gives the girl lessons on how to succeed at performing these chores. The mother gives the young girl recipes, sowing and ironing lessons. The girl is being taught how to act in society. The mother tells her not to eat on the streets, not to talk to street boys, and how to smile towards people you have different feelings of. Among the house chores, the mother teaches her daughter how to attend to the land, clean the floors, set the table -- for different meals and guests, and how to behave in the presence of men. Throughout the lecture, the mother constantly reiterates the fact that she doesn’t want her daughter to be a slut. In addition to the housewife duties she gives her daughter womanly advice. She tells the girl hygiene tips, how to love a man, and how to make medicine for an unborn child. The mother’s last lesson is how to pick bread and even at the last sentence she warns her daughter on becoming the slut. As a woman, your responsibility is to take care of your home and children, if a female fails to do this they are going against the societal norm. In their society woman are expected to be a domestic machine, this is why the mother is teaching it to her daughter at such a young age; while the daughter still goes to Sunday school.