How would "Girl be different if it were called "Boy? Discuss the cultural assumptions behind your response.

Amira Lind, M.A.

Structurally, we could infer that a short story titled "Boy" would look
completely different. If you recall, the actual short story, "," is written as one
dense paragraph of directives given by a mother to help her socioeconomically disadvantaged
daughter in a patriarchal society. Because the daughter effectively has no voice in this
culture, she has little to no voice even as the subordinate to her mother; when she does speak,
it appears as slight interjections in italics, effectively lost in her mother's desperate rant
to protect her daughter from mistakes that would lessen her status in their culture.

However, in a short story titled, "Boy," it is likely the structure would
appear as a dialogue rather than a directive. Multiple paragraphs would be present, as well as
dialogue tags and quotation marks, making it evident who is speaking and that it is an equal
exchange. Even if the socioeconomic status of the "boy" in this imagined story was the
same as the girl in the actual...

]]>