Jamaica Kincaid is not often present in discussions of contemporary Black female authors. Those who do know of her call her as a mystical and confident author. Some do not, holding her as a bitter and unlikeable voice. Her existence in the literary world seems like an anomaly. She never graduated from college, yet sailed to prominence. She even became a professor at Harvard, where she works to this day.
Kincaid may be divisive and quirky, but she’s also misunderstood.
Jamaica Kincaid has been writing since the 1980s. She is the author of novels such as Annie John, Lucy, The Autobiography of My Mother, and See Now Then. She also wrote A Small Place, an essay about her birthplace, Antigua. The former Caribbean colony frequently appears in her work, as she takes inspiration from childhood events.
The best way to get to know Jamaica Kincaid is by reading her work. However, when you know her backstory, the reading becomes rich. I hold Kincaid as one of the greatest Caribbean and American authors, and as a woman who deserves much more respect for her voice.
An Introduction to Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson on May 25th, 1949, on British-colonized Antigua. Although she was born into poverty, her mother desired education for her daughter. Kincaid learned how to read by the age of 3, and her mother put her into school. She received a British education and performed extremely well academically. Most importantly, Elaine was a ravenous reader.
Elaine had a strong relationship with her mother in her early years. However, it would start to unravel after the births of her three brothers after her ninth birthday. Kincaid notes that she felt her mother betrayed her, as her interests did not seem important to her anymore. Notably, she had to withdraw from school to help out at home when her stepfather fell ill. Meanwhile, it seemed expected that Elaine’s brothers would be lawyers and doctors and that she would take on a domestic role at best.
Elaine made her permanent move from Antigua to the United States when she was 16. She intended to be an au pair in New York with the expectation she would send some of her earnings back to her family. She did not, and she wouldn’t read the letters her mother sent her. Elaine cut off all contact, and she would not return to Antigua for many years.
In the United States, Elaine took her steps to find her own identity. She received her GED, studied photography, and discovered an ability for writing. She then changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid. Kincaid became a staff writer for The New Yorker and stayed there for 20 years. From there, she embarked on her writing career.
Her Life in Her Themes
As a Black woman and member of the Caribbean diaspora, Jamaica Kincaid has a unique literary voice. She has used her life in her writing, creating realistic and compelling pictures. She is most known for touching on colonialism, mother-daughter relationships, and renaming.
When exploring colonialism, Kincaid notes that it has given her life not entirely her own. This is true in Antigua, where the British decimated Carib Indians and brought Black slaves to cultivate sugar. She knows the means of her existence were not her choice. The people of Antigua speak English, have English surnames and place names, and do English things. Colonialism haunts her fiction, and it is powerful in the nonfictional A Small Place, where she dissects it with vigor.
Sometimes, Kincaid will equate colonialism to motherhood, in the sense that a child is a mother’s “property.” This gives way to the relationship between mother and daughter. Sometimes, such as in The Autobiography of My Mother, she explores the lack of it. With knowledge of Kincaid’s life, it seems she is drawing from her relationship with her mother. Her female-led novels suggest that at once, the characters held their mothers in high-esteem before stripping them of that prestige.
An important theme that ties into Jamaica Kincaid’s life was “renaming” In Annie John, choosing your name is taking control of your identity. Originally, Kincaid changed her name to write anonymously. She didn’t want any Antiguans to know what she was doing. However, when looking at Annie John, we could assume she had considered this, too.
Overall, Kincaid focuses on identity and freedom. Because she’s lived these experiences, her explorations are serious and aren’t often sugarcoated. Her writing can be regretful, angry, and repetitive, and it has exhausted literary critics.
Accepting Her Voice
Despite changing her name to maintain anonymity, we know a lot about Jamaica Kincaid’s background. Just as she feared, knowing about her life may have done more harm than good. Though Kincaid’s biography has been simplified for this article, there is much more to her than can be written.
Kincaid has been open about her thoughts, but readers and critics still question them. They use her autobiographical content in her works to fill in the blanks, and then they call out the similarities. However, Kincaid encourages her readers to distinguish between truth and fiction, and to separate her art from her life.
Despite this, Kincaid’s persona confuses readers and critics. She is no stranger to the term “angry black woman,” due to the bitter tone her work can carry. Her nonfiction work and her most recent novel See Now Then have received mixed to negative reviews. Kincaid has brushed off such criticism, attributing it to a lack of understanding of her work and herself.
“I’m so used to being misunderstood… They say ‘she’s angry.’ ‘Her sentences are too long.’ One reviewer accused me of not dealing with race and class. I think in my next novel I should say, ‘They’re black and they’ve been beaten’ or something like that.”
– Jamaica Kincaid
You may perceive Kincaid as self-centered and unable to take criticism, but her writing and her life are her own. Her voice introduces the culture and a story most of us have never lived. We won’t understand it unless we listen and let her speak.
It’s up to us as readers to decide how we should accept Jamaica Kincaid. I think most will agree that she is a confident woman and brave to share her experiences with the world. She’s embracing her freedom and identity like she’s always wanted to do.
Read also:
Black Women Are The Torchbearers Of America
Women Of Black History: Angela Davis
Patriarchy 101