Summary

The story “The Other Daughter” by Joanne C. Hillhouse begins with the narrator stating that her father is Prime Minister, but that she was born in a whorehouse and lived with her mother.

The narrator and her mother lived in a neighbourhood inhabited mostly by immigrants, in St John’s red-light district. The narrator did not know about these women’s – and her mother’s - social status, but she noticed the different languages they spoke, their fights, and the loud music they played. The narrator’s mother is named Ruth, but she is nicknamed Queen Elizabeth or Queen, because she felt superior to the other people in the neighbourhood.

Seven years earlier, Ruth decided that her daughter’s life should be different from her own, and she is now sending the narrator to college in Vermont, in the US. The narrator then describes what led Ruth to make this decision, skipping back into the past.

When the narrator is 10 years old, a man on the street makes a sexual comme...