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."