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Student Research submissions 2015 (2015 research options) Research Post 1 |
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Christina Holmes
The World of Jamaica Kincaid
I approached the idea of researching a topic within the curriculum that caught my complete interest, Jamaica Kincaid. There was something intriguing about Lucy that drew me to the author. My interest began with an overview given in class by Dr. White in which he detailed that many critics have criticized Kincaid's work as being angry and having angry undertones. This immediately piqued my curiosity. In reading Lucy I could clearly see reasoning behind the critics' statements, as her stories depict situations of anger which were displayed in the relationship between her and her mother and her response when Mariah attempts to share the beauty of the daffodils with her. I began to center my concentration on the critiques of her work specifically comparing current critiques with that of the past. My objective was to see if the critiques had changed over the years, or was her work still regarded as exemplifying anger?
I began my research with a simple search on Google of the name Jamaica Kincaid. The first website populated was Wikipedia. It provided a plethora of information about the author. She was born Elaine Potter Richardson, May 25, 1949 in St. John, Antigua. Her mother was a homemaker, and her stepfather was a carpenter. The family was poor, and the home had no electricity, no plumbing, nor running water. She was the only child for nine years until her mother gave birth to three sons in immediate succession which caused a shift in her relationship with her mother. Jamaica, as the information indicates, “felt neglected.” She attended school in the British Colonial Education system and was noted as a highly intelligent individual. Jamaica had a love for education but was forced to leave school to care for her family when her stepfather took ill. Her mother sent her to an upper middle class family in New York where she was employed as an au pair and attended evening classes. Later she would enroll in Franconia College in New Hampshire and drop out in her first year. In 1973 she changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid, indicating that the name change gave her freedom “to do things without being the same person who couldn’t do them.” The information also conveyed Kincaid being classified as a novelist and an essayist who enjoys gardening, and has published gardening books such as, “My Favorite Plant: Writers and Gardeners,” which details, through writing, the gardens of other artists like photographer Duane Michals and actor Michael Fox. In 1979 Jamaica married a white man, Allen Shaw, son of the editor of The New Yorker, William Shaw; they have two children. The information also substantiated critics' reviews indicating her work was considered "simplistic and angry."
For my second search I used our own Neumann Library and the search engine JSTOR.
Here I located an article titled "An Interview With Jamaica Kincaid,"
conducted by Allan Vorda. This article centered around what other writers were
saying about her work and how she felt about what was being said. In the article
she is faced with a quote by the black scholar Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr, who
indicates, "Kincaid's work never feels the necessity of claiming the existence
of a black world or a female sensitivity" (51), inferring that the author did
not write about race in her novels. Kincaid’s response conveyed, "It's not
conscious at all that I leave out a people's race. Race is important but the
thing I know deeply is that when you say someone is white or you say someone is
black it is a shorthand way of describing position of power" (51). Kincaid's
response seems founded on the concepts of colonialism which, according to the
interview, are the foundations for many of her stories. She further substantiates
this thought with the response, "In actual life 'white' is powerful and 'black'
is powerless". Kincaid's statement seems to convey a postcolonial perspective.
The article discusses her life in Antigua under colonial rule, and Kincaid
surprisingly admits that the island was better off under colonial rule: “It’s
hard to admit this, but they were all better off under colonial rule than they
are now” (54). Kincaid stipulates
that the only thing the island held on to from colonial rule was the corruption,
and that this can be seen in how the island respects certain amenities such as
education. Her main concern was the library in Antigua, which was destroyed
during an earthquake. Kincaid believes if the island had been under colonial
rule, the library, after its demise, would have been rebuilt and, as she states,
“perhaps made better” (55). She conveys that certain things of importance, such
as education, are not regarded in the same manner by the Antiguans as they were
by the Europeans. The article provides additional reasoning for her name change
indicating she changed her name because “I wanted to say things about people in
Antigua. This was a way to talk about things without people knowing it was me’
(60). The article further details how her stories reflect her life and she
reminds her readers that she can only write about that which she has
experienced.
For my last search I used a biography search which produced an article titled
"Facts About Jamaica Kincaid." The article details Kincaid’s self-imposed twenty-year exile from her homeland of Antigua and her entrance into the literary
world. Kincaid left her homeland of Antigua at the age of seventeen and did not
return for twenty years. During this time she was in North America working as an
au pair among other odd jobs such as a model, secretary and backup singer.
Further reading indicates she entered the literary world at a young age, as
formerly stated, writing articles for a teen magazine. It was at this time that
she was introduced to George Trow, who wrote “Talk of the Town” a column in the
New Yorker magazine. Soon after William Shaw, editor to the New Yorker,
hired her to write her own column for the magazine. The article also conveys a
that the Antiguan government issued a ban on Kincaid, limiting her visits to her
homeland between 1985 and 1992 due to the unfavorable things that she detailed
in her novels about her homeland. In addition, the article provides a complete
dialogue on the foundations of their novels and how colonialism has played a
significant role in providing her with motivation.
In
conclusion the research opened my eyes to another dimension of Kincaid. It
allowed me to understand her side of why she chooses the stories she writes and
it also provided reasoning as to why her novels may be depicted as angry or
having angry undertones. Aside from all the information the interview was most
supportive in detailing a more intimate side of the writer, allowing her the
freedom to respond to the stereotypes. What I love about Kincaid is that she
never tries to make excuses for her writing and she actually embraces what
critics are saying, by not holding it against them but rather by making them
aware that their words are an injustice to the art of writing as she concedes,
“I think people who want to do [stereotype] that it must be very convenient way,
but it really belittles the effort being made” (52). I was so enamored with
Kincaid that I have shifted my research to understanding the foundation of her
stories and how they correlate to colonialism.
