Failure to Inquire Greenlights Foolishness
Short story review
Where word etymology is considered a wasted privilege, precocious girls are labeled promiscuous.
Set in rural Jamaica, Do Angels Wear Brassieres? is more than a humorous story; it is the art and craft of rhetoric at its best. The story features a child protagonist with a Biblical name that fits her personality. Rebecca/Beccka isn’t too big for britches. Still, she questions why such attire is limited to men.
A pubescent woman-child with a temperament decidedly and dramatically different from her mildly unstable mother and class-conscious aunt, Beccka uses wit to elicit education from adults who are too enmeshed in expectations to realize their conformity.
The product of a love-filled yet illicit affair, Becka’s stain is indelible yet generational and clouds her ability to enter young adulthood peacefully. The constant center of unwarranted gossip rooted in her refusal to buy into the rigors of a cloistered society, she secretly reads the Bible to subvert actual and perceived authority.
This coming-of-age narrative is about bucking modesty and familial pressure to conform and explores status, wealth, assimilation, and class. Through a mix of colloquial dialogue and rich symbolism, readers experience generational jealousy based on cultural inequities and are introduced to the theory that, regardless of geography, a womanist is born, not bred.
Written by author and poet Olive Senior, it overtly blends irony with larger-than-life characters to lead readers through Beccka’s strategic refusal to be or become the “othered” girl. Careful readers will notice the tie-in between the title and the protagonist's imaginative examination of how religion subtly defines femininity to enforce patriarchy.
This comical examination of oppression from the perspective of a girl capable of redefining docility gives maidens the license to reject indoctrination. A tale about the contradictory nature of ideology and its ability to bolster power over women, readers who are parenting teenagers may recognize the loss of freedom and grief associated with maturing into womanhood.
A social critique disguised as the daily accounts of a girl brave enough to skirt ill-fitting logic, this one will appeal to anyone ready to call a truce between ego and cultural practices governing the necessity of underwear.
Rating: 5/5 stars
Another short with a protagonist hysterically haunted by the irrational:
The Armed Letter Writers, by Olufunke Ogundimu
As always...thank you!
Love the title.