The Autobiographical Impact on Kincaid`s Writing

Individual Dynamic; Kincaid as herself

“I write about myself for the most part, and about things that have happened to me. Everything I say is true, and everything I say is not true. You couldn't admit any of it to a court of law. It would not be good evidence.”
Jamaica Kincaid (Mo Review interview, Kay Bonnetti)


Does Jamaica Kincaid write autobiographically? The preceding quotation seems to be an answer to this question; however, she seems to enjoy muddying up a clear answer by both affirming and contradicting herself in the same answer. Later on within this same interview, rather than clarifying her answer, Kincaid attributes her ambiguity to her Caribbean ancestry, continuing to embed her formative identity into this location.

In J.Brooks Bouson`s book, Jamaica Kincaid; Writing Memory, Writing Back to the Mother, assertive statements about Jamaica Kincaid`s identity and intention are tidily solved as Kincaid and her works are placed neatly within the psychological field. Her motivation is attributed to an experience of shame and trauma experienced primarily within the mother-daughter relationship. Though this book appears to address the psychological aspects of Kincaid`s life, the differences between cultures of the United States and the Caribbean are collapsed. Kincaid is viewed within the minority construct within the United States.

This oversight of cultural difference between the Caribbean and the US is most apparent in the simplification of the mother, Annie Drew, who is characterized as a dominating shame inducing mother. The complete oversight of Kincaid`s contradiction of her understandings, her own ambivalent portrayals of herself and her Antiguan family, points to a serious flaw in Bouson`s analysis. The glossing over of cultural difference and simplification of understanding is a problem. When Kincaid’s contradictions are admitted to, they are attributed to her effort to gain greater personal freedom, which is similar to the social construct of the American feminist`s independence movement. Bouson repeatedly writes that Kincaid had a cruel and humiliating mother, without considering Annie Drew`s place within Antiguan society. What stresses might she have been under to behave in so harsh a manner towards her daughter? In two books, Kincaid writes that her mother should not have had children (My Brother, Lucy) and Bouson takes her at her word; but what does Kincaid actually and permanently mean this statement? Is she actually saying that her mother never was an adequate mother? By inquiring further, it soon becomes clear that Kincaid also has moments of praise toward her mother. She attributes her reading skill to her mother, her writer`s voice is directly connected to her mother. If Kincaid actually hated her cruel mother as Bousen claims, why would she have named her daughter Annie, after her mother? Kincaid`s complication of her relationship with her mother can be discovered by noting the factual contradictions uncovered in reviews, interviews, and in her fiction and nonfiction examined over her lifetime.

This question points to another oversight, as a writer who seems self-aware yet continually contradicts herself, maybe she has a reason for her inconsistencies? What would be her reason for this ambiguity? Individuals change over time; and too, their opinions may change based on situational reasons, more information, or even whim. Anyone who has written privately in a journal knows that the explorations there are frequently transitory insights that are revised or re-understood at a later time, especially when subjects are revisited over many years. Kincaid’s work has to be viewed within a cultural framework that accounts for her individuality. Kincaid writes public journals that play with the tropes of autobiography but always feel as if they might be revised again.

Reflecting back to Kincaid´s comment that her mother should not have had children, would not circumstances create a powerful woman such as Annie Drew who pushes forward even as she makes mistakes? Consider the chapter, “Girl” in At the Bottom of the River, where the mother continually tells the daughter that she will become a “slut”. Some Caribbean students have responded that the mother is worried about the daughter and wants to protect her from what has happened to so many others. It is not rare within the Caribbean for a parent to use negative/harsh criticism in order to express concern for the child’s safety or to prevent mistakes. What is seen as a cruel comment by Bouson, should be placed in the Caribbean context.

Kincaid said in an interview that she stopped criticizing her mother because her mother did not have the public access to respond in a fair way. Kincaid has been able to write personally and provide her own perceptions whereas those within her family cannot publicly respond. Kincaid reveals in this interview that she is carrying on an argument, like a public street fight, but she realizes the other side cannot be heard. Anne Drew is verbally gifted. Kincaid writes about her mother´s talent in her collection of essays, In a Small Place; it is a sense of fair play that later constrains Kincaid. She knows that her mother`s gift for public rebuttal is unavailable.

If the reader were to set aside everything outside of the text, author biography and personality and just look at the written words alone, would this be a fair reading of Kincaid? The author, Margaret Atwood writes that since the author’s life factors are always changing and flexible, the only reliable understanding of the work is found within the work itself, i.e. the only truth to be found is within the text. This disconnected approach cannot be applied to Kincaid’s writing because she repeatedly references the author and her biography. Sometimes Kincaid uses accurate names, or changes them slightly. She also elaborates on events that occur from one work to another, only shifting the emotional tone or casting the events in a different light. Additionally, when Kincaid writes, there is a Caribbean audience whose presence hovers within the text even while she seems to address a western (or American) audience. This presence makes it difficult to isolate the work outside of multiple contexts. The reader of Kincaid becomes obsessed with the author’s biography, what is a factually true statement verses an emotionally true one? What is in fact a lie? Kincaid writes to this reader by relentlessly pointing to her biography.

In Walking in the Himalayas, Kincaid writes that she is obsessing about her son, Harold; she is excessively fearful of his well being, though he has stayed home in Vermont and she is the one traveling. She has encountered threatening military Maoist and has more than once felt threatened. Nevertheless, she worries like an over protective mother. She continually writes about her motherly anxiety but her fear for her son seems to be out of place. After all, he is in a much safer environment than Kincaid. Her concern comes across as somewhat forced or put on. In this same context, Kincaid is troubled over calling herself Canadian, in order to hide from the angry militants, but she writes that she “would never call herself or think to call herself anything other than American” and later she writes that she could only be called “Antiguan now living in Vermont.” All of her contradictions are related to a kind of identity movement that can only be securely grounded in Antigua.

What are the reasons for her changes? In My Brother she reverts to her own family as a healthy new space/place for herself but her old role as daughter and sister does show a shift towards peace making. When Kincaid visits her home with her children, she encourages their relationship with her mother even though Kincaid points out that there is a competitive feeling between them. Her mother continually tries to obtain confirmation that her grandchildren like her better than their mother. When the grandmother believes that they like her better, she celebrates but Kincaid just accepts that this is a quality of her mother’s love. She also makes a genuine attempt to know her youngest brother who later dies of AIDS despite her active involvement in obtaining treatment and drugs for him from the United States. When she returns to the states, she continually refers to her Vermont home as the perfect place and her ideal role within her family. She never mentions that her husband can never travel with her to Antigua because of his agoraphobia or any other domestic points where problems in her paradise might exist. So much so that many are surprised when they find out that she is divorced. These inconsistencies create questions about what is hidden and what is revealed by Kincaid creating a wary atmosphere when reading her work.

Two theoretical/critical approaches are particularly relevant when considering Kincaid’s autobiography and her writing focus; these are the Feminist Standpoint Theory and the individualist’s perspective. Both approaches point to the question, who does Kincaid represent? Does she speak for a community?

One aspect of Kincaid’s identity formation has to do with her shifting sometimes called fluid subject position. Nevertheless, she has been latched onto by various groups who claim her as their own, African American scholars and American feminists, for example. Kincaid is classified by publishers as African American but Kincaid does not actually embrace the classification. Nevertheless, she often is an invited speaker to activities that celebrate African American contributions to literature. She has been both embraced and rejected by feminists but claims that she does not want to box her creative self into a particular perspective. Is Kincaid a feminist? This is too broad of a question and it makes more sense to focus on to one approach, such as Feminist Standpoint Theory as understood by Nancy Harcourt. (Her input to this question is particularly valuable because she also writes about autobiography and subject positions.) Does Jamaica Kincaid have a standpoint? Does she have a position to argue from? Clearly it is difficult to place her without a through analysis of her written texts and her interviews.

Does being flexible mean that there is no standpoint? Brooke Lenz argues that Kincaid’s multiple standpoints offer a way to more accurately understand her experience of being a woman and the power dynamic that characterizes the role of a post-colonial subject. Kincaid refuses to be boxed into a pre-constructed identity because she wants to maintain her freedom and nurture her creativity. The resultant oxymoronic identity construction is highly individualized. An example of a competent woman falling into non-feminists discourse is found in My Garden Book. Kincaid points out that she cannot handle money. She writes that her husband will not allow her to write checks because she does not keep track of the accounts. Her husband has to pay all the bills. Feminist scholars who want to claim Kincaid as their spokesperson or a role model, must revolt at her reference of the gender biased script of the woman who cannot handle money. Kincaid’s love of all things domestic [her own words] might also rankle, even though the concept of domestic space has a more complicated meaning related to a power base and as validation in African American and Caribbean writing and living.

Returning to Standpoint Theory, Lenz interrogates Lucy by referring to classic literary frames such as identity and point of view in order to question if Lucy has a standpoint -or rather to show how Lucy arrives at a standpoint by reflecting on the processes she undergoes while adjusting to an alien country, the United States. It is important to consider that Standpoint Theory has most often been used within the field of the social sciences and applied to identity and social behavior. Kincaid’s work can be more easily connected to social science analysis because it is autobiographically based; it is uniquely situated.

As to Kincaid’s standpoint, can she be a feminist if she does not claim it is so? Even without the term feminist, it is clear that Kincaid`s characters Annie in Annie John and Lucy in Lucy were both rebellious because of an unequal difference in how the genders are treated. Annie John spoke of her change in relation with her mother after her brothers were born; Lucy, too, mentions the obstacle of her brother’s birth to her education, both character’s mention that the reason they left Antigua was to earn money to send home. Kincaid confirms that her mother did intend for her to send money home to help support the family but she decided to break from the family and cultural expectation of self-sacrifice. The entire concept of privileging males over females as it relates to education and expectation is addressed frequently in most of Kincaid’s books. For example, Lucy confronts the double standard related to sexual freedom and becomes empowered through enjoying sexuality without commitment and without love. Annie rebels when her brothers are born and a new set of expectations for her behavior are insisted upon.

These two core threads connected to the feminist movement; i.e., the imbalance of power through unequal treatment of the genders, specifically the preference of sons over daughters, and through the double-standard regarding sexual freedom, fit in with most definitions of a feminist. Kincaid’s reason for resisting labels is well documented but they primarily focus on the constraint that those labels might place on her writing. There is tension between an author’s freedom to create and producing work that is marketable. Kincaid’s resistance to the feminist identification while calling attention to well known feminist’s concerns is likely her way of negotiating a creative space for her individuality while gesturing toward the concerns of a particular identifiable group.

Charlie Rose Interview

Identity Issues; Selected Quotes

1 When we remember remembering, [it] is already autobiography in the making. And this making, this mapping of our lives in time, I like to think helps us to keep track of who we are.

Paul John Eakin (170)

2 Belief in individualism, which seems to authorize our confidence in our freedom to think, to act, to be what we want, to say who we are, needs to be measured against the constraints of culture that condition or otherwise set our possibilities. (103)

3 The Internet and the World Wide Web are creating radically new opportunities for self-presentation, and perhaps, some observe then, new modes of selfhood as well. Jefferey Wallen's investigation of online journals or weblogs, for example, lead him to speculate that 'the contemporary 'self ' is in important ways discontinuous with what existed at earlier times." His findings parallel those of the French autobiography critic Philippe Lejeune, whom he quotes as follows; "The self [moi] is not an atemporal essence altered today by disastrous technical progress,...it has always been shaped by the evolution of medias" (Lejeune, Cher ecran 240).

4 Blogs, online journals, home page, photo album video clip /Facebook/MySpace

87% 12-17 year olds have uploaded into these Internet systems. (95)

5 Predictably, the social world of cyberspace seems to have developed its own version of the rule-governed narrative identity system [described in chapter 1]. (95)

The Truth About Lying

When is it okay to lie? In autobiography and memoir, there has to be some fictional creation to fill in for memory lapse, some omission to smooth out the story, some changing of detail to protect privacy...but when is enough enough? Looking at all the fact checking that Jamaica Kincaid has undergone, all the interview questions about her fiction being autobiography and her autobiography really being fiction, the significance of this question is readily apparent. It's significance is not lost on Kincaid because she intentionally draws the readers attention to facts and muddied truth. What is it about her that makes the reader give her permission to alter the truth or pretend the fiction is not truth? Kincaid is portrayed as a young woman who has grown up in a country that had very little resources; this idea of a success story is appealing to an American reading audience; it's the rags to riches story-even if the riches are moderate. It's the proof that with wit and will, you can overcome obstacles in life. Kincaid carries with her this embodiment of the success story, even as she resist it. She criticizes the United States but characterizes the United Kingdom as comparatively worse. One reason is that in the US you are allowed to reinvent yourself whereas in the UK you always must deal with the limiting pressures of class. Kincaid refers to the UK as "the old suitcase" meaning that nothing fresh or possible can happen there, change is slow. Also. Kincaid has stated that its acceptable to criticize the United States within the country because there is a tradition of self[-examination there. Further, Kincaid fits within the model of one who has a right to confront colonial systems and the historical aftershocks because she grew up under a British colonial education system,which makes her a suitable spokesperson within the genre. Her biographical facts lend credibility to -her tactics, the reader questions her purpose for self-reference? Carte blanc permission is given to change the details, shift the names, invent facts because: She must have a reason for the disparities in her facts. She's confusing on purpose. What is her purpose?

Narrative and Identity

Seriously, what a topic! The author, Paul John Eakin, approaches the study of autobiography in his new book, Living Autobiographically; How we Create Identity in Narrative with the following four chapters: (1) Talking about Ourselves: the Rules of the Game (2) Autobiographical Consciousness: Body, Brain, Self, and Narrative (3) Identity Work: People Making Stories and (4) Living Autobiographically.



For now, I will select material that focuses on a general question:

Who writes what..and what can be written? Later (or soon?---sooner or later!) I will address how these questions impact the reader of Jamaica Kincaid and the writer herself. On a personal level, these questions impact me as I write an autobiographically driven blog so I think about them every day.



I'm interested in autobiographical writers and the writing of autobiography because the genre places great decision making pressure on the author beginning with the question, who should write an autobiography or memoir? Once someone, the new author or the seasoned author, begins the process of writing, a slew of questions come up. What can I say? Who will be offended by this story? What should I cut or add for narrative flow, aesthetic, and literary reasons? And the most pressing question, what should I hide for privacy reasons?



Eakin begins with the idea that we talk about ourselves everyday, that we create stories in our minds even if we don't share them with others.
Two ways of looking at identity, episodic and continuous, are pointed to as in conflict with each other. Later, it seems to decide that both are really present...though he favors continuous.
What does that mean? When a person's identity is episodic, they are able to have a fresh start new identity without reference to the past...where she came from, who her parents were, ...the starting event can occur whenever...Eaken writes about a medically disabled person, who has to decide who he is every day. He can't remember the past and so is stuck in a cycle of self story creation. (Sounds like 50 First Dates, the movie) And too, he mentions a person who (Episcopalian) who choses to be new through spirit, I suppose. A continuous identity begins from the past and changes/shifts from that reference point. Reading about this makes me think about how these two ways of framing identity are implicated in notions of re-making identity through narrative.

Jamaica Kincaid changed her name and her vision of who she was in the world by moving from her home, observing how people live, writing about her insights and providing wittily bold opinions. Nonetheless, she continued to mark the place of her birth and circumstances as the genesis of who she became. She remade herself but in a continuous manner...however, that story of beginning in Antigua was contained by the narrative...in actual life, she stopped communicating with her mother for 20 years...she didn't send back money as was expected. She had a sense that her connection would bring her down or back to who she was and that was too psychologically dangerous. She has stated in her interview (insert) that she stopped communication with her family, and in Lucy she writes about the girl who won't read her family letters and will not write back. I think that narrative, the story about our lives, is continuous but in working out a new identity sometimes the past must be contained. People do this by lying about where they came from and about what happened as they were growing up. Even in their new recreated identity, they may have to lie to maintain who they currently are and even what they do.
Interestingly, Eaken puts forth the idea that there are rules that constrain the narrative and hold it to an idea of objective truth. I think Kincaid felt that her family would not support the reinvention of herself...and the stories she told in the form of writing and speech (interviews) helped her to figure out who she was and how she came to be. They also created space from that time when she lived in Antigua to the time she became her new self in the eastern United States. This containment strategy has an element of the episodic, Old Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson/New Jamaica Kincaid, and also includes continuous identity formation because her starting point is frequently referenced. The reader never forgets where Kincaid was raised and her difficult circumstances. Who Kincaid became is based a beginning subsequent events.
Who does the policing for truth in memoir...who gives permission to invent and where is the objectively verifiable truth line drawn....how much can be created by making the memoir, filling in the dialogue when Kincaid was four in Mr. Potter: the event of seeing her biological father is repeated and detailed even though it is unlikely that she could remember it to that extent. One reviewer was critical of this detail. His unbelief in the memory for Kincaid's detail and its significance to her is part of an attempt to police. Foucault refers to those who police institutions but Eaken mentions society as the controlling force. (check) I think this example supports the notion of society policing and also shows how it can be done to an author through a book review.
















Eakin, Paul John. Living Autobiographically in Narrative Identity. Ithaca, NY; Cornell University Press 2008.

What do we think about ourselves?

I was looking at this link about writing autobiography. http://www.sarasota.k12.fl.us/bhs/bryan/bryan_auto.html It's a basic level class writing assignment; I thought it revealed some of the underlying assumptions that we have about autobiography. It is organized by a series of questions such as who you are in life and what does life mean to you? What is your outlook on the future? The introduction is grounded in basic facts about your life and the conclusion comes back to this data. It cites Augustine as the first autobiographer dating from around 400AD. This orientation is what most readers expect when they read an autobiography; but it significantly differs from many autobiographies, particularly Jamaica Kincaid.

Salon Interview by Dwight Garner

This frequently cited interview opens with a description of Kincaid's ability to project power:

"Jamaica Kincaid -- tall, striking, clear-eyed -- turns heads when she strides into the lobby of New York's swank Royalton Hotel one chilly day in mid-December. It's not that she is trying very hard, dressed comfortably as she is in rumpled khakis, green blazer, and a mustard-colored bandana. Kincaid simply projects a natural authority that attracts attention, and that spills over into her writing."

She answers questions about her family and writing; saying that she feels at ease in Vermont and that she did not plan to become a writer. She points out her difference from other writers as a reason for her success at The New Yorker,"But I am Exhibit A. Because I am not a man, I am not white, I didn't go to Harvard. The generation of writers from The New Yorker that I was a part of were white men who went to Harvard or Yale. And I was none of those things." I'm fascinated with her statement about her writing process which she claims is slow: that she thinks about everything before she writes. In another essay about her writing process, she describes a different method. It's mention in an article about Mr. Potter, too, I think. Yes, here it is.

http://partners.nytimes.com/library/books/060799kincaid-writing.html

But the one I'm thinking of now is about her new story that has a character, Mr. Sweet, who doesn't like his son because he is not ascetically/artistically gifted; he has clumsily thick hands whereas the father has fine, long and thin fingered hands. Is that autobiographical? It makes me feel so sad about Kincaid's boy, Harold, about his life being shared that way. Mr Sweet is a name that Alice Walker uses for her story, To Hell With Dying. Mr. Sweet is a man worth loving even though he is an alcoholic who mostly plays guitar and doesn't work regularly. Walker also wrote a group of essays published in a book called Anything Loved Can be Saved. I'm thinking about this because it seems like there is a connection. To Hell With Dying shows how a girl can love and value an old man enough to give him strength to carry on. This new story is about a father who cannot love his son, a father in a long tradition of fathers, who cannot love their sons. Here's a reading she did at Brandeis University about this work in progress. Click here to read about Mr. Sweet in "Jamaica Kincaid visits Brandeis":

http://www.brandeis.edu/wgs/event2006-2007Jamaica%20Kincaid.html


Garner's interview makes a good deal of fuss about Kincaid's looks, she even relays a story about a party that she attends wearing only bananas around her waist. She says she was poor when she first came to New York (after leaving her job as an Au par) but she made a living as a backup singer, secretary and model. She can't remember if she posed nude. ("I certainly hope I did!"-she laughs)

Another notable interview detail is that in a comment about The Autobiography of My Mother, she says that her own mother should have never had children. She says that the character, Xuella, is a woman who decides not to have children, "And that is an observation I've made about my own mother: That all her children are quite happy to have been born, but all of us are quite sure she should never have been a mother. " Then she begins to have a moment of reflection about what she has just said. " I feel comfortable saying that publicly, I think. I try not to corner my mother anymore. Because I have at my disposal a way of articulating things about her that she can't respond to. But I feel comfortable saying that the core of the book-and the book in not autobiographical except in this one way -derives from the observation that my own mother should not have had children." Kincaid then goes on to say that her mother loved her children when they were dying and that she doesn't know what her mother will do when her brother dies. I think Kincaid's angry...she is doing that emotional distancing again, which shows itself in cold speculation that seems toned-down and sad but really sounds insincere. When her brother Devon dies, will her mother no longer have someone to love? Will she grieve too much? What does Kincaid mean?

Kincaid's comment about the only autobiographical detail-the main character's choice not to have children (just as her mother shouldn't have had children) is not true either. There are other details that reflect actual biographical facts. For example, there is a scene where Xuella hides letters under rocks that actually occurred in Kincaid's life when she was sent to her mother's family in Dominica. The event was precipitated at nine years of age, by the fact that she dropped her baby brother when she was holding him. (She admits that she resented her displacement in the family but isn't sure if she dropped him on purpose.) As a result of this incident, her mother sends her away. The mixed Carib-African-Scot ancestry of Xuella is the same as her mother's and her mother also had an overbearing neglectful father whom she ran away from; although, Xuella was sent by her father to live with the La Battes when she was fifteen. It goes without saying that her mother was raised in the same setting of the novel- Dominica, too. I found an introductory essay in America's Best Travel Writers where Kincaid as the editor of the series, writes about some of this in detail. I will expand later.

http://www.salon.com/05/features/kincaid.html

Maryln Snell Interview: Jamaica Kincaid Hates Happy Endings

This interview addresses the contentiousness that Kincaid seems to express in her writing. I like it because she is owning up to her anger directly, which by the way, is her style. The interview discusses going public about her brother's death, the frequently occurring theme in her work of powerful over the powerless, and her writing as a way of living/experiencing. This link adds a reader reaction post-a-comment section that is packed full of comments. One reader thinks that Kincaid needs to get over her anger, another complements her for the short story, "Girl" and says that while she was translating it into her own language (a group in India) she realized that her mother was hard on her sister in the same way as in the story. She understands that this was her mother's reaction to an oppressive society and that really it is a way of bonding with the elder sister. Then, she asks for Kincaid's email because she needs to ask permission for the translation. (Why doesn't she write the publisher for permission?) It also has one reader who I find delightful! She post a prayer of forgiveness for Kincaid-and it is long-to help Kincaid get over the anger she feels about her mother and her birth country! I guess this reader just glossed over the fact that Kincaid said she never wants to forget where she came from and what it tells her about how the world is organized; she doesn't want to be happy...or to forgive.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/1997/09/snell.html

Another Biography

This is an article that gives an overview of Kincaid's work, its themes, popular and critical reaction. It begins with a summary of Kincaid's life. Some common errors in Kincaid's biography are the dates given for leaving Antigua (Was she 16 or 17?), her name and those of names her family, (she was Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson, her mom was Annie (?) Richardson, her father (biological-Mr. Potter) is her step-father (Mr. Richardson) but in many conversations she mentions her father but she means the step-father so it is easy to get confused. Plus, Kincaid seems to confused detail on purpose because it is part of her approach to make the reader question facts. In other words, the whole concept of discovering a fact is false. In the Bonetti interview, she refers to this tendency of perceiving the real as a tendency of Western civilization whereas in Antigua facts (such as death) are not so certain.

http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/kincaid_jamaica.html

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

Anthurium Article

http://scholar.library.miami.edu/anthurium/volume_4/issue_1/adams-jamaica.html

Kay Bonetti Interview 1992

Jamaica Kincaid has many interviews that are available on the Internet. These are of interest because a reader can track the shifting and solidifying of her thought over time. I want to organize the interviews here. The first one I have posted is the Kay Bonetti interview in the Missouri Review. This interview mentions these works: At the Bottom of the River; Annie John; Lucy; and The New Yorker, "Talk of the Town" series. Culture: Thematically, it references the West Indian tradition of writing about home and people (mother-daughter relationship)-her home island being Antigua. She praises the United States for allowing her the opportunity to re-invent herself and asserts that in the United Kingdom this self-invention opportunity would not have been available. She refers to the cultural tolerance of ambiguity in Antigua as compared to England. She says that "dead is dead "in England but in Antigua "dead might not be dead"-that the ambiguity of her home island is part magic and/or illegitimacy; and, she refers to Western civilization or thought orientation as "the real thing" orientation. Her opportunities were limited in Antigua because she was a girl-gifted-but a girl nonetheless. She provides this example to explain the unfairness and gender discrimination found in Antigua; the Gwen character in Annie John was exceptionally talented but she only became a supervisor somewhere, however, one of the boys who beat her up because she won a prize in school (instead of him) became a cabinet member in the corrupt government. Race: She is not offended by George Trow calling her "My sassy black friend" because "she seemed sassy and was black". The British books and authors she read as a child were mentioned: Jane Eyre, Keats, Wordsworth, Milton's Paradise Lost and the Christian bible.

Bonetti, Key. "An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid," The Missouri Review, Columbia, MO. 1992,15:2, 124-42.


http://www.missourireview.org/content/dynamic/view_text.php?text_id=1947






On Autobiography and the similarities between Lucy and herself she says:

"She had to have a birth-date so why not mine? She was going to have a name that would refer to the slave part of her history, so why not my own? I write about myself for the most part, and about things that have happened to me. Everything I say is true, and everything I say is not true. You couldn't admit any of it to a court of law. It would not be good evidence."

Who is Jamaica Kincaid?

Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiquan writer who currently lives in Vermont. She has written many novels and works of nonfiction but the majority of her work is autobiographic. Kincaid is interesting because she complicates autobiography by using techniques that make the reader experience a kind of cognitive dissonance, which is the experience of holding conflicting thoughts in your mind. The way I use the psychological term is different than a psychologist might because these thoughts that you believe in, trust, and use as a guideline are uncovered through the reading of Kincaid. A classic definition focuses on a preexisting condition of holding simultaneous conflicting thoughts which is not necessarily triggered by the experience of reading. For an example of this sensation, we might consider reading Lucy, Kincaid's second novel. You may realize that you are similar to a character-in my case, Mariah,-and through the rejection of this character's identity, you begin to uncover what it is about yourself and/or the culture that you identify with that is aversive. You find yourself both liking and rejecting the character. Mariah is a sweet-natured naive mother who is unaware of her impact on other people and the natural environment, identifies with both her European and questionable Native American ancestry, and claims feminist loyalty but plays by the rules of the affluent fully integrated society woman. These contradictions cause little questioning in the character, she cannot conceptualize Lucy's perspective, but the reader is able to reflect and discover the ways that she is both alike and different from Lucy and Mariah; nevertheless, by the completion of the novel resolution is unsatisfactory. Lucy and Mariah's troubling perspectives interfere with the reader's peace. Consequently, this reader is processing Kincaid more thoroughly in her PhD dissertation, Jamaica Kincaid and the Dynamics of Autobiography.