I first read Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” as part of a generative writing workshop during a summer writing residency. Our small group gathered folding chairs around long tables set up in an old barn near the Stillaguamish River in rural Washington. I was taken with each of the readings poets Jane Wong and Claudia Castro Luna had us read, but “Girl” struck me most, with its unusual punctuation, jarring directness, and call to re-examine the lessons we receive.
Emergency physician and writer Dr. Naomi Rosenberg explains in a recent JAMA article how Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” resonates in a very different environment–with new physicians in a narrative medicine workshop.
Rosenberg comments on the unexpected “striking similarity” these physicians have to Kincaid’s young girl, joining “a system that demands they quickly learn the skills of their craft, the rules of survival, and the values they will fight for all while navigating their instinctive psychological responses to illness, injury, healing, injustice, and grief.”
Rosenberg and the “burgeoning narrative medicine department” at her urban hospital have used “Girl” in the residency didactic curriculum, medical school electives, and writing workshops for all health care system employees with a goal to “constantly explore ways to help physicians, nurses, staff, and students ‘develop attention.'”
She describes how when they ask the residents to read “Girl,” intially they are met with resistance. How could this lyrical prose about coming of age in an island culture relate to healthcare professionals who “treat gunshot and stab wounds, deliver babies, diagnose cancer, unclog dying hearts for a living?” And yet, the new physicians quickly make the connection: “‘It reminds me of residency,’ one obstetrics-gynecology resident tells us, ‘a million instructions and things to do. It’s all over the place, and rapid fire.'”
At the end of the session a simple writing prompt is given, “metabolizing their own experiences and taking a moment to string words together—something young physicians today rarely, if ever, get a chance to do.” The result is surprising: “an exploration of hierarchy, medical education, and the silent curriculum of growing up.”
I wrote about my own experience at Columbia’s Narrative Medicine workshop, where we did a similar exercise and I again encountered Kincaid’s “Girl.” I love Rosenberg’s use of this piece to help new physicians still finishing their training grapple with the accelerated nature of a medical residency, the growth and expectations that come with modern medicine. It also was interesting to learn that Rosenberg herself used “Girl” as inspiration for her own wrenching New York Times essay, “How to Tell a Mother Her Child Is Dead” which I wrote about here and is one of my own favorite pieces to use for reflection and discussion among healthcare professionals.
As Rosenberg recognizes, literature has a way of “again and again, deepen[ing] our inspection and understanding of the internal and external worlds.”
Writing Prompt: Take a cue from Rosenberg’s exercise and respond to “Girl” by writing instructions on how to be a healthcare professional (nurse, physician, pharmacist, etc.) Alternatively, write instructions on how to be a patient, or a patient’s parent or partner or child. Write for 10 minutes.