“Slender Little Thing” tells the story of Cerise, who has worked all herlife in menial jobs, and her daughter, Sophie, a high school seniorwho’s applying to college. But both of them betray this joint project:Sophie is afraid she’ll be abandoning a mother who has been dependent onher since she was very small, and Cerise isn’t sure she knows how to sether daughter free. The story is constructed so that the “whole story”is offered in the first paragraph, and then each sentence in thisparagraph is repeated to begin each section of the story. Repetition isdeterministic, and Cerise’s life can be defined in a deterministic way,so this formal barrier stands for the intangible barriers in her way.
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