Showing posts with label Caribbean Writer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Caribbean Writer. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Jamaica Kincaid, News, and Autobiographical Connection

SARATOGA SPRINGS >> Jamaica Kincaid will present “The Writer in Her World,” the annual Frances Steloff Lecture/Reading at Skidmore College, at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 2, in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall.

Admission is free and open to the public. She will receive an honorary doctorate of letters from Skidmore President Phillip Glotzbach. Following her presentation she will respond to audience questions and participate in a book signing.
Author of a wide range of books, including novels, memoirs and polemical works, Kincaid is perhaps best known for “Annie John,” “Lucy,” “At The Bottom of the River,” “Autobiography of My Mother,” “Mr. Potter” and “A Small Place.”

Her most recent book, “See Now Then,” has stirred considerable controversy, turning as it does on a disastrous marital break-up, which is said to resemble very closely the demise of Kincaid’s own long-time marriage to the son of New Yorker editor William Shawn.

Kincaid is a professor at Harvard University and a long-time visiting writer each July at Skidmore’s New York State Summer Writers Institute.

http://www.skidmorenews.com/?p=6100

Jamaica Kincaid at Skidmore

CREDIT
"Jamaica Kincaid will present “The Writer in Her World,” the annual Frances Steloff Lecture/Reading at Skidmore College Thursday, Oct. 2,  at 8 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall.  Admission is free and open to the public.
She will receive an honorary doctorate of letters from Skidmore President Phillip Glotzbach. Following her presentation she will respond to audience questions and participate in a book signing."

News: Harvard LITfest and Jamaica Kincaid


I have this view of writing as something I’d die for,” Kincaid, an African and African American studies professor in residence, said during a panel Tuesday helping to kick off the three-day Harvard LitFest. “I want to write in the way prophets want to do something. I never knew people could become rich writing, but I wanted to write and I just did it." ~Jamaica Kincaid



Saturday, May 17, 2014

Kincaid Inspires Reflection

How is Jamaica Kincaid relevant? Consider this Comment by By Terrence J. Roberts, Ph.D.

I attended a lecture last year by noted author Jamaica Kincaid. During the question-and-answer period following the lecture, a young white male raised his hand. “What can I do to help?” Ms. Kincaid looked at him, not without compassion, and was silent for many seconds. “Young man, there is nothing you can do to help.”
There was a collective, almost imperceptible, holding of breath as we audience members braced ourselves for what might follow. “Because,” she said, “what I want is for none of this ever to have happened.” We breathed again, not so much in relief but in resigned acceptance of a shared reality that seemed totally immune to any of our attempts to change it.
Link to full article:
http://wavenewspapers.com/opinion/article_c39cb126-dc88-11e3-b59a-001a4bcf6878.html?TNNoMobile

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

KINCAID IS OFFENDED

Jamaica Kincaid, 2010. (Elisabetta A. Villa/Getty Images)
KINCAID IS OFFENDED BY THOSE WHO READ HER NEW NOVEL AS AUTOBIOGRAPHY! 

Book Review 
 


I'M IMAGINING THE DAISY FLOWER: SHE LOVES ME? SHE LOVES ME NOT?

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL: 

"See Now Then is about the failing marriage between a writer and a composer living in a small New England village. The writer, Mrs. Sweet, is black and from the Caribbean, and her husband, Mr. Sweet, is white and comes from a princely faction of New York “entitled to doormen, no matter what.” The book’s premise appears to be borrowed from Kincaid’s own life: In 2002, her 20-year marriage to the composer Allen Shawn ended in divorce. Kincaid continues to live in the Bennington home they shared."

NOT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL: 

"Kincaid, however, is offended by the notion that her fiction is autobiographical. “It’s belittling to think that what I’ve done hinges so much on my own life. It’s as if the reality of what I’ve written is hard to take in so that people must ask about my life rather than what I’ve written,” Kincaid said. “The purpose of the novel wasn’t to talk about the intimate details of my life. The biggest character in the book is the thing we call time: What connects you to tomorrow."

Friday, February 22, 2013

Review Again See Now Then

"Writers make uncomfortable kin." Jamaica Kincaid

 No doubt! Jamaica Kincaid draws attention to that issue in her new novel SEE NOW THEN. Check out the following review where the author's life is directly referred to when reviewing her fictional novel.


JAMAICA KINCAID
Photo by Ann Summa for The New York Times


February 22, 2013

Home Truths

"Yet Kincaid, it seems, can never breathe easy. “See Now Then,” her first novel in 10 years, examines the hidden fault lines of a happy family that might be seen as an allegorical version of her own. Composed in incantatory prose, a “Mrs. Dalloway”-like loop of multiple viewpoints, including passages quoted or imagined from Kincaid’s other books, the novel examines — in strains hurtling from satire to fairy-tale innocence to raw pain — the faulty nature of perception."

Monday, February 4, 2013

Jamaica Kincaid's "See Now Then" is Published

Anticipating Reactions to the Autobiographical in Jamaica Kincaid's See Now Then

( Elisabetta A. Villa, Getty Images / February 1, 2013 )
Jamaica Kincaid at Festival Delle Letterature Di Roma 2010



"There are two ways to read Jamaica Kincaid's mesmerizing new novel, See Now Then. The first is the way any work of art should be read: by simply absorbing what's on the page. This is how I read the first two-thirds of See Now Then."




See Now Then
A Novel
Jamaica Kincaid
Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 192 pp., $24

It becomes impossible to avoid the personal life story of Kincaid during his well-intended reading: READ AS ART. 
Tobar who has little knowledge about Kincaid's personal life but he becomes too tempted to verify details and consequently, does some research and reports on the findings. His research changes the reading from simply ART to Art -Influenced-Autobiography and it completely changes the meaning of her work. He writes that "All of this is relevant because Kincaid, the author of more than a dozen books, is a public literary figure. And seen through the lens of some basic but widely known facts of her life, reading "See Now Then" becomes quite a different experience." Similarities about the physical appearance of Mrs. Sweet to Kincaid and Mr. Sweet to her former husband, Allen Shawn begin to create another layer of meaning in the work- it begins to feel "uncomfortably voyeuristic"  as he reads.  I await the arrival of my copy and my own sneak peek  into Jamaica Kincaid's life.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Memoir on the Influence of Indians in Trinidad and Tobago

Zobi Fredrick, who migrated first to London and then to New Jersey and now lives in Clearwater, explains the influence of Indian culture on the politics, religion and everyday life in Uprooted: From Calcutta to Trinidad, published by iUniverse, a self-publishing company.

(excerpt from South Florida Times)


Monday, January 3, 2011

Joanne Hillhouse on Being a Caribbean Writer; Writing Off the Map

Interesting autobiographical essay by Antiguan writer, Joanne Hillhouse, about her 'becoming a writer' experience. Writing Off the Map...the title reminds me of the movie Off the Map. Hillhouse is humble and yet honest about her value as a writer, she compellingly writes about her struggle and desire to be a recognized writer.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Caribbean Anthology; Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root

A New Caribbean Anthology:

Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction

Posted by NJ News on Jun 27th, 2010 and filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry from your site

Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction
The lushness of language and the landscape, wild contrasts, and pure storytelling magic abound in this anthology of Caribbean writing. Steeped in the tradition of fabulism, where the irrational and inexplicable coexist with the realities of daily life, the stories in this collection are infused with a vitality and freshness that most writing traditions have long ago lost. From spectral slaving ships to women who shed their skin at night to become owls, stories from writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Marcia Douglas, Ian MacDonald, and Kamau Brathwaite pulse with rhythms, visions, and the tortured history of this spiritually rich region of the world.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Jamica Kincaid: Caribbean Writer at Brown University Talk


Isabel Gottlieb
March 6, 2009
"Kincaid read from and commented on the journals, which she called a "founding text" of her own work and life, in Salomon 101 last night to kick off Caribbean Heritage Week. Kincaid spoke about how Columbus' initial impressions of the Caribbean set the template for how foreigners - specifically, white Europeans - continue to see the region today and what it has meant for people of Caribbean heritage. "