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