Jamaica Kincaid Girl Audio Recording

I imagine that Jamaica Kincaid lived in a house such as the above when she was a child.

Jamaica Kincaid takes her children to the school bus in Vermont.

Jamaica Kincaid reading (photo credit and link to Girl text)

 Listen...to Jamaica Kincaid's voice...

Kincaid reads her short story "Girl"

Kincaid negates-It's not because...

St. Johns, Antigua, Gavin Hellier / Corbis

"It is not because it has a cathedral, a proper one, built in a Gothic style from a chalky Antiguan stone, and the cathedral has two domes, perhaps one for each of the Johns it is named for: the Baptist and the Divine."

"It is so that I hold that city dear above all the cities I have known, that strange place with the apostrophe in its name, as if it belongs to itself and to nobody else, not to me at any rate, for I could never, ever live there. It is the one place in the world where they let me know that they do not approve of what I have become and that is: a writer."  Jamaica Kincaid

 Newsweek

Jamaica Kincaid at Literary Festival in Antigua (2006)

Wordpress blog
Photographs and captions from the above blog: Wadadli Pen
Joanne C. Hillhouse author of The Boy From Willow Bend

A reading by Jamaica Kincaid, in Antigua, as rare as...as...rain in drought season

...but, boy, are there; pictured at the first fest in 2006 are (standing) S. E. James, Marie Elena John, Rosalyn Simon, and me; and (sitting, from left) Althea Prince, Akilah Jardine, and Jamaica Kincaid

Antigua's youngest writer at the time, Akilah Jardine, signing copies alongside it's best known writer, Jamaica Kincaid.

Big Church in Antigua

St. John's Cathedral Photo credit:  http://bit.ly/cMXHDa
As mentioned in Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John, the Anglican church actually exists but is currently closed for renovation. The big question, "Where will the money come from?"

A quote from the article:
And the thing is – whatever memories it evokes; whatever it symbolizes, sweet or bitter; however one weighs the needs of an iconic but crumbling church against the bread and butter needs of the day – its value is undeniable. House of worship of the largest denomination in the country’s dominant religion, the Anglican Cathedral is a piece of Antigua & Barbuda history, and an architectural marvel that’s proved a popular lure to thousands upon thousands of tourists – evincing historical, cultural, religious and economic value at the same time.

I hope to see the church restored sometime soon. I remember walking around the grounds looking at gravestones, and thinking about the movement of time and historical events. I was visiting Antigua as part of a Caribbean Literature conference held at the State College. My paper was on Jamaica Kincaid and so I took particular delight in exploring the Big Church. It is a worthy structure to preserve. I’ve always wanted to return and explore the church in greater detail. The specific information in this article is also helpful in bringing to life how historical events influence people and their actions.

Reasonably Reliable Biography

Jamaica Kincaid grew up on a small island near St. John, sometimes when I read her work I feel as though I have been to some of the places she describes; I have been to Antigua but the ambiguity I have absorbed by reading her makes me doubt myself. One of those settings is church in St. Johns where I walked around and remembered the description of a child's funeral. Kincaid observes the women wore white, grieved loudly, and she discusses the vomiting of one of the relations, who likely is the mother. That scene is described in one of the essays in A Small Place. Kincaid is so detached that it seems that she must be either angry or fearful of reabsorbing the limitations of her small -and small-minded-home island. She mentions that she was re-inventing herself as a writer in the Bonetti interview, probable she was in the process of this new self-formation at that time.

http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Kincaid.html