University of Penn Fellows Program

UPenn Photograph 2007

Kelley Writers House Fellows Essay on Jamaica Kincaid's Visit (Anna Levett)
Though she doesn't refrain from criticism (particularly when it's political), Ms. Kincaid herself likes to remember that we are all human. As our Fellows class discussion came to an end on Monday afternoon, she encouraged us to be bold, to go at the world with the same directness as a beam of light.
"That's the thing about being young," she said. "You should say all sorts of things-because you have to have something that you should be forgiven for when you're old."

Girl by Jamaica Kincaid

Girl is published in At the Bottom of the River

    Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don't walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn't have gum on it, because that way it won't hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won't turn someone else's stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don't sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn't speak to wharf–rat boys, not even to give directions; don't eat fruits on the street—flies will follow you; but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a button–hole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father's khaki shirt so that it doesn't have a crease; this is how you iron your father's khaki pants so that they don't have a crease; this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don't like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don't like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well, and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don't squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don't pick people's flowers—you might catch something; don't throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don't like, and that way something bad won't fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn't fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?
Student Film:
Jamaica Kincaid's 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 as a Young Writer in New York

Portrait of author Jamaica Kincaid at her apartment on Hudson Street, New York City, March 22, 1985. (Photo by Neal Boenzi/New York Times/Getty Images)

BIBR Talks With Kincaid

BIBR talks with Jamaica Kincaid. By: McLarin, Kim, Black Issues Book Review, 15220524, Jul/Aug2002, Vol. 4, Issue 4
BIBR TALKS WITH JAMAICA KINCAID
Section: fiction reviews
Author Jamaica Kincaid's work explores issues both grand and personal: the nature of individual consciousness, the pain of family relationships, the nearness of history and the devastation of cultural domination. She has published three novels, two works of memoir, a short-story collection and a gardening book Kincaid lives in Vermont with her husband and their two children.
BIBR: Tell us about your latest book, Mr. Potter. How did the idea come to ?u?
JK: It came to me in thinking about my mother. The more I thought of her life, and how it was that I grew up without knowing this person that she loathed and who was my father, the more I wanted to write this book. Here was a person she absolutely detested. She never introduced me to him and he never had any interest in me. Although when I became a well-known ]author], he came to visit me. When he found me not interested in the idea of his being my dad, he actually disinherited me. It's in his will.
BIBR: Were you surprised that he sought you out?
JK: I was stunned. I had never met him face-to-face.
BIBR: Did his wanting to resume a relationship surprise you?
JK: Well, that's the culture. That's the way it is where I'm from. Everyone lives in the moment. If your father decides after thirty-something years of not recognizing you, to recognize you--you will, of course, forget the thirty-something years.
BIBR: Is it hard writing about your family?
JK: That depends. I don't think I could write about my children--ever. It wasn't hard for me to write about my brother, although if he were alive I would never have published that book [My Brother]. But it is not difficult for me to think about my family or write about them, because my family makes up a great deal of my literary imagination. I can write about them in works of fiction or fact.
BIBR: And you do so interchangeably. The Autobiography of My Mother, although a novel, was at Least partly' about your own mother, wasn't it?
JK: It was about mother in that it was about the life of woman of her time.
BIBR: How do you decide whether to make a project fiction or nonfiction?
JK: For Mr. Potter it had to be fiction, because for one thing, I knew nothing about this man. I had only his birth certificate, his death certificate and his father's birth certificate to go on. I didn't know anything about him except that he was a chauffeur.
BIBR: In Mr. Potter you write that you are "in love" with reading and writing, despite having a father who was illiterate. What does it mean to be in love with words?
JK: Being in love is separate from loving. There is a mysteriousness to being in love, a freshness and newness that is powerful. For me, reading and writing are always new. I can't believe I know it and am attached to it.
BIBR: Did you always want to be a writer?
JK: No, although I think I always knew I was a reader. I thought writing died at the beginning of the 20th century, because all the works I read as a child were from that time. I thought writing had gone out of fashion until I came to America and lived with a family, and the man in that family was a writer. It was then that I realized people were still writing and that I might do it.
~~~~~~~~
Interviewed by Kim McLarin

Interview with Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother

My Brother's keeper. By: DeLombard, Jeannine, Lambda Book Report, 10489487, May98, Vol. 6, Issue 10
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER
Section: Featured Books
AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMAICA KINCAID
Jamaica Kincaid, the critically acclaimed author of Annie John and Autobiography of My Mother, has written a new book, the National Book Award-naominated, My Brother. Set primarily in her birthplace, Antigua, My Brother is a startlingly frank meditation on sexuality, death, and family that was provoked by her youngest brother's infection with HIV and subsequent death of AIDS.
Jeannine DeLombard: In your book you discuss your efforts to prolong your brothers life through medicine imported from the United States. You also describe how he went on to have unprotected sex afterward. How did it make you feel when you realized that your actions may have allowed him to infect others with HIV?
Jamaica Kincaid: Oh, I felt like an accomplice! It was something that I hadn't thought that would happen; I didn't think that the behavior he exhibited was possible. I felt like I was an accomplice to something criminal, and I debated what to do. I did wonder whether I was assisting something murderous. But then, what happened is, I think he really lost sexual energy. But in any case it turns out that he wasn't really interested in the girls. But it was true that at the moment I realized [her brother could be infecting others], it was frightening to understand that I had helped someone who, in many ways, was that unfeeling about his own self because it was about his own self that he was being unfeeling first.
JD: This book is clearly about illness and dying, but it seemed to me that it also gave you a space to think about sexuality in a way you hadn't done before, at least in print.
JK: I've never been afraid of speaking frankly about sexuality. I came to see very early in my life that it was an important language for a female to be comfortable with, because it is so often used against females in a damning way. I've always felt at ease with the language of sexuality, which, strangely, is a language that people find offensive, but it's only offensive because I think they mean to use our not having public familiarity with this language as a weapon against us. I hope I've always been comfortable with sexuality; if I haven't been, it's not out of fear, it's just because it han't made any sense in the books.
JD: Do you find that by addressing homosexuality, HIV, and AIDS, that you are reaching a different, or broader, audience with this book?
JK: No, as far as I can tell. The one thing is, my audience with African Americans has grown. When I first started to write, I'd go to a reading, and it was overwhelmingly [white]... maybe I d see one face. But as Essence and places like that review my books more, I have a growing audience among African Americans.
I think if I have gay readers, I've always had them. I think the book, for whatever reason, isn't so much about [her brother's] homosexuality as about his inability to be himself, and a part of himself was that he was a man who loved men, or who desired a sexual relationship with men. That he couldn't have felt comfortable with that, even to himself, was, I think, a great part of his inability to live. It really was a suffocation. It's really more about the inability to live. Now, often the inability to live as yourself involves your sexual l don't want to say these words, they don't sound quite right: orientation, identity--but who you can find happiness with is a deep part of your life, a deep part of how you arc made up spiritually. But we all suffer that, or, I should say, we are all vulnerable to that.
~~~~~~~~
By Jeannine DeLombard
Jeannine DeLombard teaches American and African-American literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Her book reviews have appeared m the New York Times and the Washington Blade, as well as Lambda Book Report.

Million Man March and an Interview with Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid: Writing for solace, for herself. By: Holmstrom, David, Christian Science Monitor, 08827729, 1/17/96, Vol. 88, Issue 35

JAMAICA KINCAID: WRITING FOR SOLACE, FOR HERSELF
Her work gives voice to the lone, struggling individual
Dateline: CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
Outside, freezing weather makes the air crack. Inside, with a cold gentleness, Jamaica Kincaid puts the recent Million Man March in the palm of her voice and squeezes.
"I find spectacles like that very disturbing and dismaying," she says, seated in a book-jumbled office here at Harvard University, where she teaches creative writing part-time.
"In America, it seems to me that people of African descent in particular are asked always to speak in group voices," she says, "and I'm not a group person, so it doesn't appeal to me. There is this terrible sense of group identity, but one really is a person. You just get out of bed every day with your own doubts and certainties, and they are your own."
Ms. Kincaid, born in Antigua in the West Indies, has arrived at a separate vantage point from most blacks to view the condition of black America. Like the protagonists in her celebrated novels, social context and politics are background noises. One struggling individual is the heart of the matter in her new novel, "The Autobiography of My Mother," as in her four previous novels.
"I am pleased to be black," Kincaid says. Her voice at times rings with Eleanor Roosevelt's high-pitched enthusiasm, spliced to Maya Angelou's precision. "I'm pleased about being black the way I have two eyes," she says. "I don't find particular pride in it. How can you be proud of something you can't help? If you don't like black people, don't like me. On the whole, I'm just myself."
When Kincaid arrived in the United States from Antigua in 1966 at the age of 17, she was Elaine Porter Richardson, a gangly young woman with a West Indian lilt to her voice and a job as an au pair. Luxuries like indoor plumbing were unknown to her.
In New York, Kincaid was fiercely curious and intellectually raw. She stumbled around the city for several years, completing high school and some college courses. Although treated cruelly as a child, she was conditioned not to bring shame on her family, particularly her mother.
"When I started to write, I was embarrassed that my family would know I was writing," she says of the first piece that the New Yorker magazine published. "There was no reason in the world for it to work out, so I changed my name because I didn't want them to laugh at me."
A writing career bloomed rapidly.
"I met wonderful people who were very kind to me," she says. Short stories about her West Indian life began appearing regularly in the New Yorker. Most reviewers of her books now bathe her regularly in the waters of praise for the "emotional truthfulness" and power of her writing.
What characterizes her works is a calm voice in trouble, an unsteady protagonist alternately bewildered and judgmental in her relationships -and always alone and intrigued by life's sharp corners.
"I am writing for solace," Kincaid says of her books. "I consider myself the reader I am writing for, and it is to make sense of something, even if to repeat to myself what has happened. Character and ideas are not separate from me. I don't like dialogue. I can't bear it. I do like reading it in other books, but I can't do it myself."
Asked if she thinks a troubled childhood forced her interior voice to engage in a dialogue with herself, just as in her writing, she answers with a laugh. "Oh gosh, that's interesting. You are probably right. Perhaps the only voice I hear is my own."
Married to a composer, Kincaid has two young children and lives in Bennington, Vt. Her childhood memories are bluntly shared.
"I was very badly treated as a child under the guise of love and attention," she comments. "But to be absolutely honest, it was not unusually so. I think people in that part of the world have humiliation and pain visited upon them to an incredible degree, and in turn they visit it on their children."
Her politics are unabashedly liberal. "I love liberals," she says. "I so miss William Kuntsler [an activist attorney who recently passed on]. He always seemed to be somewhere some misguided, lowly person had done some horrible thing.
"I don't think there is a failure of liberalism at all," she adds. "You can't get rid of poor people anymore than you can get rid of people."
PHOTO (COLOR): JAMAICA KINCAID: 'I consider myself the reader I am writing for, and it is to make sense of something, even if to repeat to myself what has happened.', ROBERT HARBISON - STAFF
~~~~~~~~
By David Holmstrom, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
________________________________________

American Literature Defines Autobiography and Memoir

Creative Nonfiction: Memoir and Autobiography
"Many writers hunger for open, less canonical genres as vehicles for their postmodern visions. The rise of global, multiethnic, and women's literature -- works in which writers reflect on experiences shaped by culture, color, and gender -- has endowed autobiography and memoir with special allure. While the boundaries of the terms are debated, a memoir is typically shorter or more limited in scope, while an autobiography makes some attempt at a comprehensive overview of the writer's life.
Postmodern fragmentation has rendered problematic for many writers the idea of a finished self that can be articulated successfully in one sweep. Many turn to the memoir in their struggles to ground an authentic self. What constitutes authenticity, and to what extent the writer is allowed to embroider upon his or her memories of experience in works of nonfiction, are hotly contested subjects of writers' conferences."
From "Contemporary American Literature" Chapter 10 posted December 2006 (n.p.)

AP Image

Jamaica Kincaid's writing is referred to as autobiographical work.
After an introduction about women writers from the English speaking Caribbean Jamaica Kincaid is briefly mentioned:
"Rhys's work opened the way for the angrier voice of Jamaica Kincaid (1949- ), from Antigua, whose unsparing autobiographical works include the novels Annie John (1985), Lucy (1990), and The Autobiography of My Mother (1996)." (n.p.)

Answers dot com link to Jamaica Kincaid

A useful link at Answers dot com for information about Jamaica Kincaid

Article on reading See, Now, Then 2011

Little Star 2

ALOUD photos April 2011
Reading of selections from See, Now, Then by Jamaica Kincaid
Kincaid is recognized as Mrs. Sweet (who speaks as Mrs. Hest). (article and photo credit)
The humor works because the fiction is read as true about Kincaid's life. The characters reference real people or at least real names. (All of the names are real in some way.") I think Mr. Mcgreggor might be a reference to Miss Potter's Peter Rabbit. She mentions (as Mrs.Sweet) the car that she is driving, which is a "Rabbit."

I don't think of myself as funny. It's a thrill and an honor that I've made you laugh."

She doesn't remember the first time she read this material. It was in Rome for the literary festival. 

(In a blog post published here on June 16.)

Jamaica Kincaid - Letteratura, Festival internazionale di Roma: "JAMAICA KINCAID
Author

Participates at:
15 JUNE DESTINY - Life forms: choice and chance
Read: Il Decano e Mrs. Hess - Unpublished
Of: Jamaica Kincaid"

Jamaica Kincaid's theme for her June 15th reading was Destiny- Life forms: choice and chance. She read an unpublished work: "The Dean and Mrs. Hess." 

PodCast Jamaica Kincaid 2011

Jamaica Kincaid reads from her latest novel, See, Now, Then @ this link for more details
or click on the words Podcast here for direct access the audio.

http://www.lfla.org/event-detail/571/Jamaica-Kincaid (photo credit found in article)

Jamaica Kincaid Video at MIT

"A Reading by Jamaica Kincaid" The lecture hosted by MIT Program in Women's Studies, MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Council for the Arts at MIT was held on April 4, 2007.

“I rule out the memoir. It caramelizes and beautifies things…. I wouldn’t want to know how to make a beautiful thing. Implied in memoir is forgiveness that I don’t feel. I never forgive and I never forget, and I’m never cathartic.” Jamaica Kincaid (quote from MIT World article)

Jamaica Kincaid reads Biography of a Dress (and more) at MIT

Kincaid's Controversial Speech: Politics and the Garden

Jamaica Kincaid in Charleston, North Carolina

Kincaid took issue to President Monroe's VP -Daniel Tompkins and completely changes her planned speech. The organizers were angry with her" bringing politics" into the garden talk.(NPR Talk Radio)

An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid

The Missouri Review Summer 2002 25.2
Kay Bonetti

Jamaica Kincaid at the University of North Dakota Writers Conference

Jamaica Kincaid spoke recently at the North Dakota Writers Conference. You can find photos at this link
or through facebook. An attendee said Jamaica Kincaid was brilliant.

YouTube Search: Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid does not have control over her online image:
The Rome Literature Festival Trailer is the only authorized video of Jamaica Kincaid: It has 45 views:
The thousands of other views are from unauthorized sources. Jamaica Kincaid does not have an official webpage.

Rome Literature Festival Trailer
Featured work: Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy is translated along with her other work at
LETTERATURE 9° Festival Internazionale di Roma 45 Views July 7, 2010
Il decano y Mrs. Hess
________________
Un(?)authorized Published videos:

Junot Díaz and Jamaica Kincaid at the 92nd Street Y by 92nd Street Y 1848 Views November 16,2009

Anisfield-Wolf/SAGES Lecture by CASE (no name) 3127 Views October 26, 2009 

Student films and "Mockumentaries":

Student on sight? documentary for A Small Place 179 Views July 9, 2010


This Youtube is an amateur movie trailer for a nonexistent film, A small Place (lower case in video) staring Oprah Winfrey and is rated NC for "Extreme partial nudity"179 Views June 9, 2010
"This is a trailer for language arts class for the book a small place by Jamaica Kincaid"



Unknown satire (student?/secretmuffin124) featuring an actor pretending to be Jamaica Kincaid who is hosting a Badminton World Cup tournament.(racial stereotypes) 88 Views) July 10, 2010

Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" by GlamazonAR 1093 Views July 7, 2009
"Comedy Sketch"

Asian students film: "Girl" EngFilms (Audio removed by site)
2041 Views February 4, 2008

Another "Girl" student interpretation: "A recreation of the short story that piles on the stereotypes of what a woman should be." (Geno Sartori:/VeniVeniVenci/Italian) 5,350 Views February 23, 2010 

A project for a college Thinking and Writing course.
 "Girl" Asian students (Japanese/XvanrAy?) for an English Class June 6, 2010

"Girl" 2754 Views February 22, 2008
"Jamaica Kincaid is a famous writer from Antigua who wrote for the New Yorker way back when. This was a slide show based on her story "Girl" If you want to understand the slide show look up her story. It's quiet interesting."

An unprofessional video of Jamaica Kincaid seated talking into a microphone in Israel(? ) The video highlights her shoes.307 Views Estsegal1 May 3, 2010

Jamaica Kincaid hosts film: "Sugar Cane Alley"

Jamaica Kincaid in the Dakota community: A Writer's Conference

University of North Dakota on Friday and Saturday April 1st and 2nd

Excerpts:   
Final days: Friday and Saturday are the final days of the annual UND Writers Conference, including Friday night’s “Great Conversation” with author Jamaica Kincaid, at 8 p.m. at UND Chester Fritz Auditorium. All Writers Conference events are free and open to the public. A story about the Writers Conference and a schedule are published elsewhere in Friday’s Herald.

Jamaica Kincaid will take over at 6 p.m. with a showing of Sugar Cane Alley, a film about the life of a family on the Caribbean island of Martinique.  The evening and conference will close with "A Great Conversation with Jamaica Kincaid" at 8 p.m. (April 1, 2011)

Kincaid's writing featured as "Literature of Domesticity"

Kathy Goldner, founder of Out Loud Audiobooks, will give a presentation on the Literature of Domesticity
at Belfast library ME. Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. at Belfast Free Library, 106 High St.

Excerpt from article:   Goldner will feed the audience luscious tidbits from her favorite authors and explore the beautiful and moving, sensual and funny world of food, garden and knitting writing with Colette, Jamaica Kincaid, Bill Bryson, Vita Sackville-West, Angelo Pellegrini, Katherine White and others.

Goldner was taught to knit by her German grandmother, a World War II refugee and psychoanalyst who knit while listening to her patients. Returning to knitting many years later, Kathy founded Knitting Out Loud so that knitters could listen to histories and essays on their craft while knitting.

http://waldo.villagesoup.com/ae/story/domestic-lit-at-belfast-library/383448

Is Jamaica Kincaid American?

Jamaica Kincaid as part of the American Cannon

"I am very grateful for this award, this medal — named in honor of a great man, white and dead at that, I’m sorry to say — in American literature. In that sentence, it is the 'American' that is important, for this novel about a girl coming of age on a small island in the Caribbean has become part of the American canon." —Jamaica Kincaid