Elaine Polter Richardson was a young girl who lived with her parents in a Caribbean Island. She was living in a poverty household but that did not change the relationship she had with her mother. Elaine and her mother were very close until the age...
Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl communicates strong messages about both society’s expectations of women, and the way that certain things told to someone can have a large impact on them. The piece is written in the form of a continuous list. This style emulates our inner stream...
The novel, Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid shows how a young girl’s relationship with her mother changes as she goes through puberty. Annie John, the 12 year old girl, develops mentally and physically, but also starts to become distant from her mother who she has...
Jamaica Kincaid has portrayed troubled mother-daughter relationships extensively throughout her work, but her 1978 story “Girl,” from her first short story collection At the Bottom of the River, remains her most succinct depiction of this theme. Her fraught relationship with her own mother, Annie Richardson,...
Jamaica Kincaid’s novel “Annie John” offers a nuanced exploration of British culture as experienced through the lens of the titular character, Annie John. Set against the backdrop of Antigua, the novel delves into Annie’s coming-of-age journey and her complex relationship with British culture, which is...
In the essay, On Seeing England for the First Time, Jamaica Kincaid gives off a tone of being conquered, yet resistant to the power of the English. Kincaid attracts the reader by writing about a different array of issues and we are able to see...
?From the point of view of a reader, it is clear that Jamaica Kincaid is not satisfied with the way Antigua is now. By comparing pre-colonial Antigua with colonial and post-colonial Antigua, Kincaid creates a novel that is anti-tourist and questions whether the island was...
Introduction In Jamaica Kincaid’s novel “Annie John,” the themes of gender relations and the mother-daughter relationship take center stage, interweaving to create a complex narrative. While the mother-daughter relationship is a driving force behind the plot, it is profoundly influenced by the overarching theme of...
Mothers usually have their children’s best interest at heart, guiding them through life at an attempt to prevent offspring from repeating their own mistakes. In the short story, “Girl,” Kincaid depicts her teenage years after her mother gave birth to Kincaid’s three younger brothers in...
Most teenagers go through a time when they believe that their parents are too overbearing and strict with them. Although this is a normal feeling to have on occasion growing up, Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Lucy reveals the intense situation of an over-bearing parent. Through the...
In the beginning of Jean Rhys’ novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette Cosway, a young creole woman, lives in poverty with her mother, Annette, and her brother, Pierre, on the island of Jamaica. In the society in which they live, Antoinette is oppressed and discriminated against...
In the Western world, the Caribbean has long been viewed as an Edenic paradise. As a result, it has attracted legions of tourists from all over the world seeking an escape from the crushing banality of their day-to-day existence. While popular culture would have one...
Introduction In A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid forces the reader to take on the role of a tourist as she brings them through the town of Antigua, criticizing the moral ugliness of tourism and the negative consequences of European Imperialism as she does so. Through...
Jamaica Kincaid’s novel, Lucy, revolves, in large part, around the immigration and acclimation experiences of the title character, who has left her small Caribbean island to forge a new life in New York City. Yet there is another female in this novel’s cast of characters...
In her work, “To Name is to Possess”, the author, Jamaica Kincaid, vilifies the possessive mentality that has captured human minds for centuries. While disparaging this class of conquerors, Kincaid connects human conquest to our dominant relationship over nature. She then acknowledges her participation in...
First of all, I want to start by introducing the author. Jamaica Kincaid was born in Antigua in 1949. In my opinion, she is, with others, an incredibly talented novelist, essayist and gardener. She currently lives in the United States, in Vermont. She has written...
Annie John is a fictional novel that is inspired by true events written by Jamaica Kincaid. The novel follows the life of a girl named Annie John as she grows up in Antigua. Throughout the book, Annie struggles with conforming to the cultural standards of...
Introduction Questions of identity, both personal and collective, have persisted throughout human history. From the dawn of self-awareness, individuals and societies have grappled with the profound inquiries: “Who am I?”, “Who are we?”, “What am I?”, and “What are we?” These existential questions have fueled...
“The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” written by Junot Diaz in 2012, tells the story of a cheater who struggles to get over the fiancée he cheated with, while “Girl,” written in 1978 by Jamaica Kincaid, simply mentions what a girl is expected to do and...
Introduction Jamaica Kincaid’s novel “Lucy” delves deeply into the themes of identity and self-discovery through the lens of its protagonist, Lucy Josephine Potter. The narrative follows Lucy, a young woman from the Caribbean, as she relocates to the United States to work as an au...
Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua (part of the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda). She lives in North Bennington, Vermont (in the United States), during the summers, and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University during the academic year.
Works
“A Small Place”, “Annie John”, “At the Bottom of the River", “Lucy”, “My Brother”, “See Now Then”, “The Autobiography of My Mother”
Themes
Kincaid's writing explores such themes as colonialism and colonial legacy, postcolonialism and neo-colonialism, gender and sexuality, renaming, mother-daughter relationships, British and American imperialism, colonial education, writing, racism, class, power, death, and adolescence. In her most recent novel, See Now Then, Kincaid also first explores the theme of time.
Style
Jamaica Kincaid is known for her impressionistic prose, which is rich with detail presented in a poetic style, her continual treatment of mother-daughter issues, and her relentless pursuit of honesty.
Quotes
“Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.”
“There's something to be said about a slightly plump person — you have just enough of too much.”
“I wish that I could love someone so much that I would die from it.”
