One of the biggest takeaways in the Chapter 5 afterparty section of Evaristo’s “Girl, Woman, Other” was Shirley. When I specifically read chapter 3/Shirley’s section at first, I felt lots of sympathy for her. Growing up, her mother Lennox caused her lots of hardship from lack of childhood validation to love affairs, and I viewed her in a really sympathetic way. I feel like that almost continues in chapter 5 seeing how out of place she was compared to the other characters. When running into Carole, Shirley felt a sense of shock seeing her success. Then this quickly turned into absolute embarrassment when joking about her career, jokes Carole didn’t find funny at all. Feeling insecure in her outfit on top of feeling insecure about this, Shirley seemed really anxious already, but that’s just the beginning, and I felt like Shirley’s anxiety is piling higher and higher. Shirley starts to think back to her betrayal against Amma and feels shameful for it. There was a moment of positive emotion and relief between Carole and Shirley connecting on their student teacher bond, but Shirley is a whirlwind of embarrassment as her emotions “came off strong”. Similar to how she felt when joking about her career to Carole, Shirley felt embarrassed about her job when talking to Dominique too. The last mention of Shirley is of her being “boring” and a “closeted homophobe” and running through my head while reading this was just how this was not a positive chapter ending for Shirley. I think she was left in a state of embarrassment and insecurity, but she begins to reflect on that, and how a part of it is her own wrongdoings.
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