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Kincaid, Jamaica
Identification Antiguan American feminist writer
Born May 25, 1949; St. John’s, Antigua
Kincaid’s fiction offered an angr y and idiosyncratic new
voice to American readers, as it addressed racism, colonial-
ism, and the repression of women.
By the eve of the 1980’s, Jamaica Kincaid had already
left Antigua and established herself in New York.
Born Elaine Potter Richardson, she had changed
her name and had connected with the New York
literary scene, where she was an outspoken critic
of the many varieties of social bigotry. Her first
book was a collection of short stories,At the Bottom of
the River(1983), the first story of which was the often-
anthologized “Girl.” This short-short story is com-
posed almost entirely of an island mother’s instruc-
tions to her daughter about how to live her life, from
cooking to cleaning to spitting, always with a refrain
that indicates the mother’s suspicions that, despite
her daughter’s protests to the contrary, the girl is
bent on becoming a “slut.” Tensions between moth-
ers and daughters would form a major theme in
Kincaid’s later work.
Kincaid’s first novel,Annie John, was published in- Heavily autobiographical, like all her work, it
not only depicts a mother and daughter whose bond
is broken because of the mother’s betrayal but also
reveals the contradictions between island life and
the irrelevant education provided by a colonial gov-
ernment. Annie John’s resistance to that schooling
emerges as she resists her teachers’ efforts to make
her into a proper English schoolgirl, particularly
when they repress her sexuality. Another element of
her rebellion arises when she makes a shrine of a pic-
ture of Christopher Columbus in chains. An English
education is essentially anomalous in the Caribbean,
as Annie John knows.
Kincaid pursued her examination of the racist re-
sults of colonialism inA Small Place(1988), a nonfic-
tion account of her visit to Antigua in 1986 on a
Guggenheim Fellowship. Kincaid’s anger is palpa-
ble in the text, as she describes the disparity between
the lives and attitudes of the island’s white tourists
and those of its black and Carib Indian residents.
The tourists’ blindness to the island’s heritage of re-
pression and slavery is analogous to the blindness of
a colonial government that required island school-
children to study English poetry. Kincaid was equally
angry at Antiguans’ willingness to accept colonial-
ist standards of life and thought, even after the is-
land achieved independence, seeing it as a result of
Antiguan greed for tourists’ dollars. Not surprising,
the book was rejected by many Antiguan and English
readers, but it became Kincaid’s stepping-stone to
her next novel,Lucy(1990), in which she would ex-
amine similar blind spots in the United States.
Impact Jamaica Kincaid’s voice was one of a rising
tide of angry feminist writers and writers of color in
the 1980’s. Her particular addition to that chorus
was her decision to force Americans to consider the
role of colonialism in racism and the repression of
women.
Further Reading
Bloom, Harold, ed.Jamaica Kincaid: Modern Critical
Views.New York: Chelsea House, 1998.
Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth.Jamaica Kincaid: A Criti-
562 Kincaid, Jamaica The Eighties in America
Jamaica Kincaid.(Sigrid Estrada)