The List

“The List” is for Genesis a toxic document that represents both her peers’ rejection and her own self-rejection. Since fifth grade, she has held on to a piece of paper two of her classmates gave her, on which they had written “100 Reasons Why We Hate Genesis” (6). Ironically, the list originally contained only sixty items. On her own, however, Genesis has been adding to “The List.” When the reader first hears of it, she has just added reasons number 85 and 86. Each item is a negative justification stated as fact and accepted by Genesis as such. For the reader, each item feels like a small but important chip broken off of Genesis’s endearing persona, which elicits heartache and sympathy. “The List,” always capitalized and usually evoked at critical moments, is throughout the novel a parallel narrative to Genesis’s inner monologue. It recurs when she scrubs...