ipl-logo

The Garbage Girl: A Short Story

752 Words4 Pages

As a toddler I developed a reputation for being the Garbage Girl. Every Wednesday as the trundle of the garbage truck echoed through the streets of my village I would bolt outside, princess dress flapping in the breeze to meet my honorary Aunty Katrina, the driver, and Uncle Conrad, the collector. I’d don my child sized gloves and grab the miniature trash picker that Uncle had gifted me, and we’d go to work. My mornings were spent happily skipping after the truck and spearing wayward pieces of trash that were left abandoned in its wake and I’d wait with bated breath for the almighty roar that accompanied the compacting of each bag. My shrieks and giggles of delight could be heard resonating throughout the village and Uncle and Aunty would cheer right alongside me. It was bliss, pure and unadulterated.
Some elders would shake their heads and tut-tut at the sight of me (“she’s a girl! How can her parents allow this?”) engaged in such an unladylike activity but Aunty …show more content…

The cake decorating class is next door,” the lecturer sneered from behind his podium. “This is Applications of Software Engineering. Pretty complex stuff.” The unspoken too difficult for a girl hung heavy in the air and all of the excitement I had felt at the prospect of attending this seminar evaporated and I was left gaping at the lecturer’s now turned back. In the dim projector light I could see forty people, all men, turn to look at me where I stood frozen.
I wanted to run. It would be so easy to leave and forget the stinging humiliation that colored my cheeks. I felt the eyes of the room on me as I stood deliberating; fight or flight? Should I stay? Do I dare? Being the only girl in a room full of men is a dangerous position to place myself in. I took half a step back as fear and doubt assaulted my mind. Why am I here, I thought wildly. I don’t belong. What the hell am I doing? I turned on my heel clumsily and, half blinded by emotion, I fumbled for the door

Show More
Related

  • Textual Analysis Of Dana Reinhart's Trashless Lunch

    463 Words  | 2 Pages

    This supports the main idea because it relates to the idea of the Trashless Lunch era. The summarization of that passage is author is a mother that packs lunch for her children and she realized that the amount of trash thrown away at lunch is unnecessary. After this she came up with the Trashless Lunch which uses plastic containers instead of plastic bags and a

    Read More

  • Summary Of Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

    998 Words  | 4 Pages

    Speak, written by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a literary handbook that youth can read to learn about the struggle with coping from trauma inflicted by being sexually assaulted. When a person experiences this type of trauma it can be frightening to blindly live through the after affects. During certain phases of life people tend to rely on different interpersonal relationships as a way to cope with major life events. The process of coming forward after being assaulted, can be an intimidating part of the incident due to the amount of added stress it can bestow on an already stressed out victim. Speak allows the reader to learn about the process of coping with being raped as well as the effects on interpersonal relationships and what to expect when

    Read More

  • Comparing The Rent Collector And Behind The Beautiful Forevers

    349 Words  | 2 Pages

    In two community's of trash pickers, two authors visit improvised city slums in two developing countries. The stories both entail the hardships of trash pickers surrounding metropolitan areas in devolving countries. While Camron Wright, author of The Rent Collector, equips first person to create a personal and poignant account, Katherine Boo, the author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, employs third person to invoke an informative, somber report. These effective uses of person allow for the authors to sufficiently craft two similar accounts with completely different reader experiences. Camron Wright, author of The Rent Collector, utilizes first person to in order to convey the exact emotion of characters.

    Read More

  • Summary Of On Dumpster Diving

    997 Words  | 4 Pages

    Response to Dumpster Diving I first read the essay, “On Dumpster Diving” by Lars Eighner on New England Journal of Public Policy. The first lines of the essay amazed me, for I have never heard about a person going dumpster diving or scavenging. Eighner’s “On Dumpster Diving” is a part of his latest work, “Travels with Lizbeth” (1993), which is based off of his homelessness travels with his dog (Lizbeth).

    Read More

  • Summary Of On Dumpster Diving

    422 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the essay “On Dumpster Diving”, the author Lars Eighner informs us about the art of dumpster diving. The writer, who speaks from personal experience of gathering things from dumpsters, prefers to be called a “scavenger” rather than “foraging” for scavenger, in the writer’s opinion, has an honorable meaning for doing something that takes skills and experience. In the beginning, Mr. Eighner demonstrates the stages that any new dumpster diver goes through. Feeling of shame and Self-hatred is the first phase which the author explains as they hate to be seen. However, after they realize how perfectly good stuff people throw in dumpsters, they become obsessed by gathering anything their hands lay on.

    Read More

  • Amazing Grace Kozol Analysis

    443 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “Amazing Grace”, Cliffie, while eating a chocolate chip cookie, shows Kozol a waste incinerator “burning ‘red bag’ products, such as amputated limbs...bedding bandages.” (l. 74-76) Cliffe calls these products ‘burning bodies,’ relating to how bad the air is around them thanks to the products being burned and how people get sick and can die from not breathing enough good air. If the cities found a new, cleaner way of disposing of trash, like recycling, then we would have cleaner air for everyone. Second, we can brighten the world by sharing extra goods with people around us that don’t have what we have.

    Read More

  • Summary Of On Dumpster Diving

    680 Words  | 3 Pages

    He often finds food that is still warm and edible, and even discovering valuables which still contain some form of value within itself; so that poses the fact that our society disposes of unnecessary things which would be considered wasteful. How can we prevent such useful and valuable resources to going to waste? Our Government can enforce new regulations that divide certain objects (food, merchandise, clothes, etc…) into different categories so that when the “garbage men” come to pick up the supposed “trash;” it would be much more easier to determine what can be salvaged and what can’t. This is a very effective method, since we can utilize similar approaches and mindsets that Eighner once used and apply it to our own methodical way of liquidating such

    Read More

  • Gavin Barone: A Short Story

    1503 Words  | 7 Pages

    My fingernails dug so deeply into my palms that red ribbons began to flow from the gashes. “What the – Jay, let’s scram!” Footsteps thundered upon the floorboard as the intruders made their escape. I doubled over, freeing a heavy breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

    Read More

  • Satire Of The Homeless Research Paper

    437 Words  | 2 Pages

    Do you get to sleep in a warm bed? Do you get to eat at the table with food in front of you and a roof over your head?? If you answered yes to any of these questions, consider yourself lucky. A lot of homeless people don’t get to do any of these things. Just think about that.

    Read More

  • How Does Lars Eighner Use Irony In On Dumpster Diving

    534 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lars Eighner gives an account of his life as a homeless person in “On Dumpster Diving.” In this account, Eighner frequently uses the literary device of irony to contribute to his description of diving and scavenging ethics. One such example of irony in Eighner’s account is, “[s]tudents throw food away around breaks because they do not know whether it has spoiled or will spoil before they return” (16). The author further elaborates on this point by using the example of a half jar of peanut butter, which is an item some college students regularly discard. Those college students fail to acknowledge that “nonorganic peanut butter does not require refrigeration and is unlikely to spoil in any reasonable time” (Eighner 16).

    Read More

  • Irresponsibility In The Glass Castle

    758 Words  | 4 Pages

    Jeannette took on other ways to find food, even going so far to fish food out of garbage cans. “When other girls came in and threw away their lunch bags in the garbage pails, I'd go retrieve them ... I'd return to the stall and polish off my tasty finds.” (Walls 173) Her parent’s recklessness pushes Jeannette to find food in unsanitary locations, instead of depending on others to provide her next meal for her.

    Read More

  • Satire Essay On Homeless

    625 Words  | 3 Pages

    Homeless Homelessness is a major key issue that has been on our island for more than a decade. It hasn’t come to the point yet that it would get solve or anything. Many of our government officials does not clearly know where they are heading due to the twist and turns that they have been. Blaming the homeless is clearly not the issue but not really having to identify that it is the government that is creating this problem to be a more bigger and heated issue. If only they set aside a time to experience what they are going through, if only they look in the bigger picture, instead of building a rail that would only help a quarter of the population, if only they were able to empathize more --- I would go on from here but it is the ‘if only’ and the ‘what if’ that could have made a difference then we, [the people] would not have to go through this controversial.

    Read More

  • Living Simply In A Dumpster Analysis

    728 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagine spending one year of your life living in a dumpster. Not just the average, everyday dumpster, but a customized dumpster suited to meet all of the essential needs for one to live in. Professor Jeff Wilson, also referred to as “Professor Dumpster,” is engaged in a one year project in which he will be sleeping in a dumpster every night. His future plans consist of making the dumpster even more appealing by adding a toilet, solar panels, a second floor, and several other amenities. Wilson says in the article, “‘We could end up with a house under $10,000 that could be placed anywhere in the world, fueled by sunlight and surface water, and people could have a pretty good life’”

    Read More

  • A Habit Of Waste By Nalo Hopkinson Summary

    530 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nalo Hopkinson’s story “A Habit of Waste” takes place in a society where bodies are interchangeable, the main character is Cynthia, a Caribbean woman who discards her body for the figure of a white woman. When analyzing this fictional tale from a post-colonial lens, it is clear that the author is focusing on giving a voice to the experiences of those born after colonization and the history that was crushed along with it. The author uses an emotional appeal to express the struggles people of colour, specifically Caribbeans, face post-colonization. Cynthia's desire to belong outweighs any logic or ethics, and as a result of white supremacy, this sense of belonging comes in the form of internalized racism. Living in a society filled with racist ideologies often leads to internalized racism, as shown in this short story.

    Read More

  • Wasteland Reaction Paper

    1283 Words  | 6 Pages

    Wasteland is a documentary by Lucy Walker that depicts the lives of selected garbage pickers in Jardim Gramacho – a massive dumpsite found in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The film is about Vik Muniz’s 2-year journey back to his home country seeking to give back to an impoverished community through making images out of an unusual material – trash. The film featured 7 garbage pickers from the landfill, and each has a story that brought them to their current places. One unique thing about the whole creative process is that the pickers themselves became part of it. Vik imagined that as they work on their own and each other’s images, the pickers will not only show themselves to a broader world that is for now comfortably oblivious of their existence, but also see themselves differently (Fuchs, 2010).

    Read More

More about The Garbage Girl: A Short Story

Open Document