Perspectives

Literary movement

The short story “The New Girl” by Marc Mitchell is a piece of postmodern literature. Published in 2001, the story uses a first-person narrator and depicts an event that shows the lives of ordinary people dealing with conte…

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Works with the same themes 

“The New Girl” is similar to the short story “The Fabulous Button Sisters” by Sarah Salway in exploring the issue of peer pressure and bullying. Both stories have a character-narrator who is influenced by a dominant peer. Unlike in "The New Girl", the narrator is also the target of her friend’s bullying in Salway’s story.

A story that also explores taught racism is “Pink” by Judith Thompson. Like “The New Girl”, “Pink” is a first-person narration by a child. However, “Pink” reads more like a monologue than a simple account of events. Nevertheless, both stories look at how children inherit racism from their parents, the narrator of the “The New Girl” in America, and the girl in “Pink” in South Africa.

The theme of…