Race, Gender, and Identity in Kincaid's "Girl" and Staples's "Just Walk on By"
This essay compares Jamaica Kincaid's short story "Girl" and Brent Staples's personal essay "Just Walk on By," examining how both works explore the intersection of race and gender in American society. Despite their contrasting literary styles—Kincaid's stream-of-consciousness monologue and Staples's first-person sociological narration—both authors address the social constraints imposed on Black Americans by dominant white culture. The essay analyzes themes of suppressed anger, societal expectations, alienation, and self-empowerment, while highlighting how gender shapes each narrator's experience of racial subordination and the different strategies each uses to reclaim agency within an oppressive social system.
- Introduction: Two Voices on Race and Identity: Overview of both texts and shared themes
- Literary Style and Narrative Technique: Contrasting narrative methods in each work
- Social Constraints and Racial Norms: How society limits Black identity and freedom
- Suppressed Anger and Its Expression: Rage as a theme in both stories
- Gender as the Defining Difference: How gender shapes each narrator's experience
- Self-Empowerment Through Subversion: Strategies for reclaiming agency and power
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper consistently reads both texts in parallel, using direct quotations from each to support comparative claims rather than treating them in isolation.
- It moves logically from surface-level literary analysis (style and technique) to deeper thematic concerns (anger, gender, empowerment), building a coherent argument across sections.
- The Vivaldi "cowbell" analogy from Staples is effectively unpacked to illustrate the limits of direct resistance to dominant culture—a strong example of close reading.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates sustained comparative analysis, identifying both similarities and meaningful differences between two texts. Rather than simply listing parallel themes, it uses the contrast in gender perspective—Kincaid's female domestic sphere versus Staples's male public space—to sharpen its central argument about how race operates differently across gender lines.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with an introduction establishing shared themes, then moves through plot and style summaries before analyzing social constraints, suppressed rage, and gendered differences. It closes with a section on subversion and self-empowerment that synthesizes the comparative argument. Secondary source support (Simmons) is incorporated alongside primary quotations throughout.
Introduction: Two Voices on Race and Identity
Brent Staples and Jamaica Kincaid have written seminal short works contained in anthologies of American and African American literature. Although Kincaid's "Girl" and Staples's "Just Walk on By" were published roughly twenty years apart, they share common themes related to racism and the experience of being Black in the United States. Both authors address the intersection of gender and race: Kincaid focuses on the role expectations placed on women in Black society, while Staples concentrates on the perception of Black males by the dominant white culture. Both writers imbue their work with emotional intensity, not shying away from anger but rather transforming powerful feelings of frustration into points of liberation.
In "Just Walk on By," the narrator describes his experience as a night walker—someone who enjoys taking long walks at night in the city. What would typically be considered a normal activity takes on tremendous political importance for Black men. Staples points out that people on the streets, particularly white pedestrians, would run across the street or cower in his presence. He comically calls these pedestrians his "victims," revealing a dark sense of humor and making light of the fact that being a Black man renders him apparently criminal in others' eyes. In "Girl," Kincaid writes a stream-of-consciousness litany of advice given from mother to daughter. The mother warns the daughter to behave in socially sanctioned ways, lest she be perceived as a "slut" or insubordinate.
Literary Style and Narrative Technique
The two stories employ dramatically different literary styles, techniques, and methods of storytelling to achieve their respective goals. "Girl" uses an unusual rhetorical methodology combining stream of consciousness with potent imagery. Kincaid writes what is essentially one extended run-on sentence serving as a monologue of proscriptions and admonishments from mother to daughter. The litany of orders highlights generational differences, but more broadly Kincaid shows how race shapes gender identity and roles in American society. As she writes: "This is how you smile to someone you like completely, this is how you set a table for tea" (Kincaid).
Whereas "Girl" uses second-person narration—highly unusual in prose—Staples uses first-person narration. In "Just Walk on By," the narrator describes his informal sociology experiments as a Black man who notices that his mere presence on the street makes whites, and especially white women, uneasy. Although he does not use a series of parental admonishments, Staples does comment on the social norms governing the behavior of people of color, making the two works comparable in their shared concern with prescribed behavior.
Works Cited
Kincaid, Jamaica. "Girl."
Simmons, Diane. "The Rhythm of Reality in the Works of Jamaica Kincaid." World Literature Today, vol. 68, no. 3.
Staples, Brent. "Just Walk on By."
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