Boys and girls

Alice Munro , Nobel Prize in Literature 2013

Boys and Girls (originally Boys and Girls ) is a short story by Alice Munro from 1964 and 1968, respectively. A version is available free of charge on the web at womeninlit.tripod.com .

Episodes from everyday life on the silver fox farm of their family of origin are told in first-person form from the perspective of a young person without a name. When she works with the father, the young person is mistaken for a boy and she stays away from the mother's work as much as possible. From the age of 11, the narrator has more and more expectations of a typical girl and her role in the family begins to change. When she acts according to her own intuition in an important situation, her younger brother reveals what is the reason for the father to make his judgment regarding her new status. The narrator comments on this in her last sentence: "Maybe it was true."

In English, the narrative is about 17 pages long and consists of three sections, the first of which is the shortest and the last the longest.

Boys and girls in 1983 as Boys and Girls filmed with one the following year Oscar as Best Short Film Award.

German-language editions

• Translated by Heidi Zerning (from: Alice Munro, anthology Tanz der blessed Geister (English 1968)), Dörlemann Verlag Zurich 2010; also in Canada for hand luggage. Stories and reports. A cultural compass. (Anthologie) Unionsverlag , Zurich 2010, unv. Nachdr. 2018, pp. 123–143
  • 2nd ed. S. Fischer Verlag , Frankfurt 2013

literature

• Reingard M. Nischik (Un-) Doing Gender: Alice Munro, Boys and Girls (1964) , in: The Canadian short story. Interpretations , Reingard M. Nischik (Ed.), Camden House, Rochester, NY, 2007 ISBN 978-1-57113-127-0 , pp. 203-218
• Héliane Ventura, Alice Munro's Boys and Girls : Mapping Out Boundaries, in: Commonwealth Essays and Studies , 1992 Autumn; 15 (1): 80-87.
• Marlene Goldman, Penning in the Bodies: The Construction of Gendered Subjects in Alice Munro's Boys and Girls , Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne (SCL / ÉLC) , 1990; 15 (1): 62-75

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alice Munro: Boys and Girls , readable online for free at womeninlit.tripod.com . Sometimes the server is overloaded, so it's worth trying again later.