Jamaica Kincaid and Euma Okoro on Writing

Jamaica Kincaid and Euma Okoro on Writing

 Jamaica Kincaid and Euma Okoro on Writing, Financial Times Interview. Lilah Raptopoulos. October 2, 2022,

Jamaica Kincaid I didn’t know there were such things as careers. A lot of things you, your progress in the world just sounds so wonderful to me. I was sent away because my parents had too many children that they couldn’t afford. And so being the eldest, I was sent away to help support them. And I was very resentful of it. And after a while, I stopped sending my salary home and would shop at very expensive stores. I was the best-dressed nanny you ever saw. I went to college, dropped out, decided I wanted to be a writer because people who knew me as a child are not surprised that I became a writer because I was always pretending I was writing. Now . .. 

 Lilah Raptopoulos You mean you would say, like “this book is actually by me”?  

Jamaica Kincaid Yes, and I wouldn’t say it, but it was clear that I thought I had written it. And I was interested in your seeing yourself in the world. I never thought of seeing myself as, as I am. For instance, I was punished a lot because I was very disruptive in school and I think I was about 9, 10. I was given a copy of Jane Eyre to read and in a corner. That was my punishment and not recess. And I read it and pretended I was Charlotte Bronte. And it never occurred to me that neither Charlotte Bronte nor Jane Eyre looked like me. I just felt I was them. Racial identity didn’t come into my imagination until I went to America, because where I come from, everyone is black. So if you say, Oh, the black guy, you would say which one? Because . . .   

Lilah Raptopoulos (Laughs) Jamaica, what was it like? You know, it was the ’70s, being a woman and a black woman in an organisation that was mostly white, mostly men. What was it like? I mean, you said a lot of people didn’t agree with you or were hostile and then it didn’t bother you? 

Jamaica Kincaid Well, in the early days of being in New York, my friend, a New Yorker writer, took me to meet the editor, William Shawn, and he said, well, she could give it a try. Didn’t look as if I could possibly write for them. And I did write something about the West Indian Day carnival. And I made notes and I gave it to him, thinking he would rewrite, have someone rewrite it. Well, it appeared just the way I had written it. And I looked at it and I said, “Of course that is my voice”. And from there I just started to write. But there were no black people at The New Yorker, and there were, in the world of literary New York then there were no black people. But America, everybody tries to be white. But I’d been brought up in a British colony in which (chuckles) in those days only certain people were white. And so when I came to America and I met all these white people, there were people from Lebanon, Poland, Spain, and they said they were white. And I just thought, no your not and I just ignored them. So I have my distortion of race. I have to thank the English people. (Laughter)