'The New Girl', resumé af Marc Mitchells historie

The new girl is based on a real story which is told by Marc Mitchell from the collection of biographical texts: True Tales of American life by Paul Auster from 2001.________________________________________________________________________________________________

This story takes place in the neighborhood Prospect Street in Alabama in the US in the 1970s, where a lot of white families live. The story tells us an episode of the author’s childhood but more specifically, an encounter with a young black girl. Characters here are the narrator, his friend Allison and a black girl whose name is not mentioned. The narrator and Allison reject the little black girl, after she moved in to their neighborhood.

This is a story that happened 20 years ago. It is about two friends playing together on a hot and bright summer day. The narrator is an eight-year old boy and the friend called Allison is ten years old. The narrator is looking up to Allison. They live in a white, lower middle-class neighborhood on Prospect Street. These two kids are the only kids on the block and therefore, they are always playing together. One day, the two friends are bicycling around the area. Suddenly, the narrator discovers a young girl in the middle of the street. They smile at each other. The narrator assumes, that the girl must have moved into the newly sold house next to Allison‘s. Suddenly Allison interrupts the positive contact between the girl and the narrator. When Allison sees that the girl is black, she comes with some racist outbursts like nigger and she stresses that she does not want to play with niggers and continues to say that the girl is not welcome in the neighborhood and starts to threaten her. The narrator is very surprised by the reaction from Allison but does not say anything against the spiteful behavior. The little girl hurries home to her mother and the narrator notices that short after they are watched from behind the curtains. Later on, the little girl moves. The narrator seems to regret that he/she never got or never took the chance to say sorry to the girl for what happened this day. Even after 20 years, the narrator still have regrets about what happened this summer day and only hopes that he has been forgiven by the little girl back then.