Jamaica Kincaid

Writer

• Born: May 25, 1949
• Birthplace: Saint John's, Antigua

Known for her fluid and poetic blend of fiction and nonfiction, Kincaid has brought attention to the negative effects of colonialism and its more lasting effects on young postcolonial independent nations.

Early Life

Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson in Saint John’s, Antigua, an island in the British West Indies. She was the illegitimate daughter of Roderick Nathaniel Potter, an illiterate chauffeur of African and Scottish descent. Her mother, Annie Richardson Drew, originally from Dominica and of Carib descent, assisted a local physician. Kincaid was raised by her mother and stepfather, David Drew, a carpenter. Her maternal grandmother was a practitioner of obeah, an African folk religion similar to voodoo (vodou).

With her education begun by her mother, who taught her to read by age three, Kincaid entered the Moravian preschool before moving on to the Princess Margaret School and the Antiguan Girls School. Kincaid’s early life changed dramatically with the birth of her first brother when she was nine. The addition of siblings, especially boys, significantly altered her relationship with her mother. Kincaid developed a love of books and a habit of stealing them from libraries. In addition to her formal schooling, she apprenticed with a seamstress.

In 1965, at the age of sixteen, Kincaid emigrated to the United States to work as an au pair for a family in Scarsdale, New York. She had left with the understanding that she would send back money for her family; however, she never did so and eventually severed all ties, refusing to open letters from home. She continued her education, taking classes at Westchester Community College in New York and Franconia College in New Hampshire. She also studied photography at the New School for Social Research. Turning toward a career in writing, she began working as an interviewer for the teen magazine Ingenue. Although she was barely able to afford a desk and a typewriter, Kincaid began honing her writing skills.

In 1973, she adopted her pen name, Jamaica Kincaid, as an act of transformation and to distance herself from her family. She began contributing articles for the New Yorker column Talk of the Town in 1974. Her first article was merely a set of notes on an annual Caribbean carnival held in Brooklyn. She contributed articles and fiction to various magazines, including the Paris Review, Rolling Stone, and Harper’s. In 1976, she was hired full time by her mentor, New Yorker editor William Shawn. In 1979, Kincaid married Shawn’s son Allen, a composer. The couple had two children, Annie and Harold, and divorced in 2002.

Life’s Work

Kincaid’s first major literary achievement was the publication of the short story “Girl” in the New Yorker in June 1978. The story, which was reprinted in Angela Carter’s anthology Wayward Girls and Wicked Women (1987) and Kincaid’s first collection of short stories, At the Bottom of the River (1983), issues a series of domestic and social instructions for a girl entering womanhood from the point of view of a mother. This story is frequently included in college literature textbooks.

At the Bottom of the River, Kincaid’s short-story collection, was published in 1983 and earned the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The book comprises ten lyrical vignettes, which might also be described as prose poems. Seven of the vignettes originally were published in the New Yorker. The works demonstrate Kincaid’s use of chant-like repetition and focus on the mundane and ordinary.

Annie John, a coming-of-age novel, followed in 1985. The book’s chapters were published individually in the New Yorker and can be read independently as interrelated short stories. The book centers on a girl growing up in Antigua and her relationship with her mother. At the end of the novel, the protagonist leaves Antigua to study nursing in England.Lucy (1990), Kincaid’s second novel, appears on the surface to be a continuation of Annie John; however, its narrator has just arrived in the United States and works as an au pair for an American family. This novel also differs dramatically in tone and organization from Annie John.

A Small Place, published in 1988, is a partially autobiographical novel in four parts. This work adopts what some critics have described as an angry, antagonistic tone and depicts postcolonial tourism in Antigua—an island nation so poor that it cannot afford a sewage system—as a continuation of slavery. Kincaid’s memoir, My Brother (1997), has a similar angry tone and chronicles the death of her brother Devon from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in 1996. The book’s nonlinear narrative develops themes common to Kincaid’s other works.

Despite its title, The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) is a work of fiction. The novel is a monologue in the voice of a seventy-year-old Dominican woman, Xuela Claudette Richardson, whose mother died giving birth to her. This book received the Lannan Literary Award. Kincaid continued her meditation on parenthood in Mr. Potter (2002). Narrated by the daughter of Mr. Potter, an illiterate chauffeur, the story moves unreflectively through his life in Antigua. The narrator repeatedly contrasts her literacy with her father’s illiteracy.

A dedicated gardener, Kincaid has written several books about flowers, plants, and gardening, including My Favorite Plant (1998) and My Garden Book (1998). In 2005 Kincaid published Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya, as part of National Geographic’s series in which famous authors write about their journeys around the world. Described as part memoir, part travel journal, Among Flowers tells of Kincaid’s experience as she accompanies her friend, a botanist who is on a seed-gathering expedition, to Nepal.

References to gardeners and gardening also appear in Kincaid’s fiction. The novel See Now Then, published in early 2013, is about the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Sweet and its dissolution, set in small-town New England. Like Kincaid, Mrs. Sweet is a gardener whose marriage ended in divorce, but Kincaid cautions against a simplistic reading of the novel as fictionalized autobiography. Kincaid won an American Book Award for the novel in 2014. Three years later, she was further recognized with her reception of the 2017 Dan David Prize in literature, and in 2019 she delivered Bard College at Simon's Rock's commencement address.

Significance

Kincaid’s writing explores life on the small island of Antigua, using its inhabitants’ experiences to develop universal and timeless themes. An immigrant without a college degree, she became the only African American woman on staff at the The New Yorker in 1976, a post she held until 1995. In 1994, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, becoming its only Black member. Kincaid is a professor of African and African American studies at Harvard University, where she has taught since 1992.

In response to critics who have dismissed her writing for its anger, Kincaid has said in an interview with Alyssa Loh for the American Reader, “People only say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman. But all sorts of people write with strong feeling, the way I do . . . . There are all sorts of reasons not to like my writing. But that’s not one of them. Saying something is angry is not criticism. It’s not valid.”

Bibliography

Braziel, Jana Evans. Caribbean Genesis: Jamaica Kincaid and the Writing of New Worlds. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009.

Ebentraut, Joseph. “12 Reasons Why Writer Jamaica Kincaid Is a Total Badass.” HuffPost. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 24 Oct. 2014. Web. 21 Sept. 2015.

Edwards, Justin D. Understanding Jamaica Kincaid. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007.

Kincaid, Jamaica. “Jamaica Kincaid Hates Happy Endings.” Interview by Marilyn Snell. Mother Jones 22, no. 5 (September/October, 1997): 28-31.

Kincaid, Jamaica. "Jamaica Kincaid Is Black and Jewish—but She's Through Talking about Identity." The Times of Israel, 31 Mar. 2019, www.timesofisrael.com/jamaica-kincaid-is-black-and-jewish-but-shes-through-talking-about-identity/. Accessed 20 July 2021.

Kincaid, Jamaica. “A Lot of Memory: An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid.” Interview by Moira Ferguson. The Kenyon Review 16, no. 1 (Winter, 1994): 163-188.

Kincaid, Jamaica. “Singular Beast: A Conversation with Jamaica Kincaid.” Interview by Brittnay Buckner. Callaloo 31, no. 2 (Spring, 2008): 461-470.

Loh, Alyssa. “A Conversation with Jamaica Kincaid.” American Reader. American Reader, n.d. Web. 21 Sept. 2015.

Simmons, Diane. Jamaica Kincaid. New York: Twayne, 1994.

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Jamaica Kincaid: A Literary Companion. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2008.