In the very short story "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid, food is mentioned several times. The story is written as a monologue delivered by an overbearing Caribbean mother to her daughter. The mother instructs her daughter on the proper way of doing things as a woman so as not to be perceived as a "slut." The many domestic tasks her mother outlines include how to cook pumpkin fritters, how to "eat your food in such a way that it won't turn someone else's stomach," and how to set tables for various types of meals. The cooking and table setting instructions add to the story's themes of domesticity and subservience as they both imply that the girl will one day live a life where she is hosting and housekeeping for others. In these moments, the mother embodies the oppressive patriarchal culture, and (some scholars argue) the strict rules of colonialism.

The instructions given on how to eat food, rather than how to prepare it, serve a slightly different purpose. Because eating is a bodily function, these instructions get much more personal, even sensual. "Don't eat fruit on the street—flies will follow you" can easily be read as coded instructions about the girl's sexuality. Don't flaunt your enjoyment of sensuous delights (eating fruit) lest you attract unwanted attention.

The story ends on a food image. The narrator tells her daughter to always squeeze the bread at the market and the daughter interjects—one of only two times she is able to break through her mother's lecture—to ask "but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?" And the mother is outraged that her daughter might grow up to be the kind of woman not allowed to feel the bread. Here food is a symbol of respectability. The right kind of woman would be trusted to feel bread before purchasing it, because there would be no doubt as to her respectability and character.

Thus food operates in three ways throughout the story: as a totem of domesticity, a symbol of sexuality, and a marker of societal acceptability.