Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid

First published: 1985

The Work

Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid’s first novel, is a story of a girl’s coming-of-age. On a conscious level the protagonist is contemplating death, friendship, sexual desire, and the developments in her body; she is also experiencing a deeper need to cut herself off from her mother, even if in the process she must hurt them both. The novel is set on the Caribbean island of Antigua. As a young child, Annie John clings to her beautiful and loving mother. She likes to caress her, smell her perfume, take baths with her, and wear dresses made of the same fabric as hers. At school, Annie shows that she has a mind of her own, but at home she takes note of everything her mother says or does.

Soon, however, Annie begins to realize that human relationships are fragile. They can be dissolved by death, by infidelity, or by changes in one’s feelings. At a new school, Annie finds herself abandoning her best friend, Gwyneth Joseph, for a dirty, defiant red-haired girl. At home, Annie betrays her mother’s trust and love. She lies to her about unimportant matters, such as whether or not she has any marbles, and she even insults her. To some degree Annie is acting out her feelings about her parents’ lovemaking and about her own sexual development. Annie is also reacting to her mother’s evident embarrassment when Annie assumes a woman’s identity. On a deeper level, Annie’s love for her mother is so strong that only by rejecting her can she establish a space for herself and a personality of her own.

At school, Annie gets into trouble by writing under the picture of Christopher Columbus the same words that her mother had said in mockery of her father, Pa Chess. Clearly, Annie senses that there is a similarity between the colonial system, which guaranteed that blacks would remain low in the economic system, and the patriarchal family, which ensures the subordination of females. By the time she is fifteen, Annie is thoroughly miserable, loathing her mother, herself, and her existence. She becomes ill, and for almost four months she is bedridden, nursed by her mother, her father, and finally, by her grandmother, Ma Chess, who appears mysteriously and evidently effects a cure. At last, when she is seventeen, Annie is sent to England. As the ship prepares to sail, Annie and her mother weep, and Annie relents enough to wave good-bye. Now free to find her own identity, she is free to love her mother, if only at a distance.

Bibliography

Austin, Jacqueline. “Up from Eden.” Review of Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid. Voice Literary Supplement, April, 1985, 6-7. An enthusiastic review that also tries to locate Kincaid’s work in the larger tradition of Caribbean writing.

Bouson, J. Brooks. Jamaica Kincaid: Writing Memory, Writing Back to the Mother. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Study of the representation of motherhood and maternal relationships in Kincaid’s writing. Includes a chapter on Annie John that focuses on the role of the mother in enabling the daughter to become a writer.

Cudjoe, Selwyn R., ed. Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference. Wellesley, Mass.: Calaloux, 1990. Includes an informative interview in which Kincaid discusses her name change, her mother, and Caribbean writing, among other things. Helen Pyne Timothy’s essay provides a helpful reading of rebellion in At the Bottom of the River and Annie John.

Dutton, Wendy. “Merge and Separate: Jamaica Kincaid’s Fiction.” World Literature Today 63, no. 3 (Summer, 1989): 406-410. An excellent article, one of the best resources available for someone wishing to compare At the Bottom of the River and Annie John as complementary texts that explain and expand upon each other.

Edwards, Justin D. Understanding Jamaica Kincaid. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007. Comprehensive study of Kincaid’s work, devoting a chapter to Annie John and Lucy.

Garis, Leslie. “Through West Indian Eyes.” The New York Times Magazine 140 (October 7, 1990): 42-44. A profile of Kincaid that appeared when her third novel, Lucy (1990), was published.

Ismond, Patricia. “Jamaica Kincaid: ’First They Must Be Children.’” World Literature Written in English 28, no. 2 (Autumn, 1988): 336-341. A consideration of Kincaid’s presentation of childhood in Annie John and At the Bottom of the River. Focuses on the Caribbean elements of Kincaid’s writing.

Murdoch, H. Adlai. “Severing the (M)Other Connection: The Representation of Cultural Identity in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” Callaloo 13, no. 2 (Spring, 1990): 325-340. Psychologically informed reading of the mother/daughter conflict in Kincaid’s writing, focusing on Annie John.

Perry, Donna. “Initiation in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” In Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference, edited by Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley, Mass.: Calaloux Publications, 1990. Perry discusses storytelling traditions in the West Indies, seeing Annie’s narrative as participatory in the matrilineal relationships that are grounded in those traditions. She also explores the role of obeah in shaping Annie’s cure from her experience of dissociation.

Stanchich, Maritza. “Home Is Where the Heart Breaks: Identity Crisis in Annie John and Wide Sargasso Sea.” Caribbean Studies 27 (July-December, 1994): 454-458. Stanchich discusses identity crisis among women as thematic subjects in Kincaid’s Annie John and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. She compares the similarities in the experiences of the female protagonists, analyzes the unified self within Annie in Annie John, and explores the fragmented self within Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea.

Timothy, Helen Pyne. “Adolescent Rebellion and Gender Relations in At the Bottom of the River and Annie John.” In Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference, edited by Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley, Mass.: Calaloux Publications, 1990. A thorough close reading of the novel. Timothy’s analysis combines psychological, aesthetic, and cultural approaches in her assertion that Caribbean sexual repression elicits Annie’s rebellion.