ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on representations of girlhood in a Jamaican context, captured through the interior experiences of 11-year-old Beccka in Olive Senior’s short story “Do Angels Wear Brassieres?” (1986). Post-colonial studies, Caribbean feminism, and Girls’ Studies provide the perspective and insight through which I engage with, interrogate, and critically analyze this text. When fused together, these lenses provide ways of reading girlhood experiences which ensure visibility of hidden realities, allow us to hear the silenced or ignored voices of girls, and connect us with the interior dimensions of the experience of girlhood. Overall, “Do Angels Wear Brassieres?” demonstrates 1) how girls are oppressed and restricted by patriarchal, colonial ideals embedded in the religious culture of the Jamaican society; 2) how girls resist dominant cultural labels of femininity; and 3) how the imagination of girls is used to create alternate and other characterizations of the female self, allowing them to reproduce their own identities.
