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Student Research submissions 2015 (2015 research options) Research Post 2 |
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Christina Holmes
Jamaica Kincaid and
Colonialism
I concluded my last research post
wanting to shift my focus to the correlation of colonialism and Jamaica
Kincaid’s stories. During the previous research many of the articles mentioned
her writing having undertones of anger and sadness. It can be overlooked when
one or two say that; however, when the tally exceeds, it piques one’s curiosity.
Having read Lucy and detecting animosity between the protagonist and
her mother, there was also a deep-seeded animosity towards Lucy’s homeland in
the West Indies. While reading the various articles there seemed to be a bit
more to Kincaid’s subject matter than imagination, hence the shift in focus. My
specific intention is to find out if colonialism or the remnants of colonialism
had a direct impact on Jamaica Kincaid’s storyline.
I began my second round of research by
returning to the article by Allan Vorda, “An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid.” In
the article Kincaid responds to a question Vorda proposed regarding
Kincaid continually being stereotyped as a female Caribbean writer. Kincaid’s
retort implies that all her experiences make her the writer she has become and
it is not specific to her being Caribbean but all-inclusive: “my history of
colonialism, my history of slavery” (Vorda
52). She indicates if she had been anywhere else other than Antigua, her
life would have been different, and she may not have become a novelist. In
trying to ascertain a connection between her storylines and the anger and
sadness often depicted in her novels, Vorda brings up her childhood and inquires
if her childhood was filled with sadness and anger and, if so, is
that the catalyst for her stories? Kincaid indicates that living in the
Caribbean is much different than visiting the Caribbean. Kincaid’s response
denotes a strong hostility towards her homeland: “Try living on a Caribbean
paradise and see if they find it happy and carefree. . . . No one living in
these places you might think of as a paradise thinks it is a paradise. They want
to leave“ (Vorda 53). It is evident by Kincaid’s statement that her
childhood was filled with moments of sadness and it has impacted her life and is
part of her story.
Further into the article Kincaid
discusses the ramifications of colonialism on her homeland conveying that the
Antiguans did not learn anything positive from their colonizers, but rather kept
the negative. She states, “I’m only sad to observe that the main lesson we seem
to have learned from colonial rule is all the corruption of it and none of the
good things of it . . . such as their [Europeans’] love of education or their
documenting historical past’ (Vorda 54). Kincaid harbors deep resentment in how
the Antiguans act now amongst themselves: “They treat the citizens in the worst
colonial way . . . . They are behaving in the same way the colonial powers did”
(Vorda 55). Here one can conclude that her anger is not only towards the
colonizers but also her own people for the way they have remained after
colonialism.
My last search resulted in an article
at Postcolonial Studies @ Emory. This article focused on the major themes that
are found in Kincaid’s novels and how statements from her novels could be
directly correlated to her upbringing in Antigua. In her book A Small Place she
makes a profound statement: "Antigua is a small place, a small island. . . . It
was settled by Christopher Columbus in 1493. Not too long after it was settled
by human rubbish from Europe, who used enslaved but noble and exalted human
beings from Africa [. . . ] to satisfy their desire for wealth and power, to
feel better about their own miserable existence, so that they could be less
lonely and empty—a European disease” (2PS). Kincaid’s statement definitely
carries undertones of anger. As the article substantiates, Kincaid wears her
angry tones as a “badge of courage” crediting “her intimate connection to her
homeland for creating a sort of traumatic story” (2PS). It is these
traumatic stories that Kincaid pulls from in developing her stories.
In conclusion I found that the
experiences of colonialism in Kincaid’s life did indeed shape many of the
stories in her novels. In her real life she and her mother were at odds
especially after her brothers were born. We see Kincaid pull this into the story
of Lucy as she describes the relationship she has with her mother. Again in Lucy
we we see her lack of joy as it pertains to her homeland as she continually lets
the reader know that she will not be returning to the island. Kincaid’s story
can only pull on the experiences that she has witnessed. Her tones may indeed be
full of anger and animosity but given her experiences what else could it be?
WORKS CITED
Abbas, Kiarostami. “Postcolonial
Studies @ Emory.”
Http://scholarblog.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2014/06/10/kincaid-jamaica/.web
Vorda, Allan. “An Interview with
Jamaica Kincaid.” JSOTR: 49-76.Web. 3 Nov. 2015.
