Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua, which is part of the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda. She lives in North Bennington, Vermont, during the summers and teaches at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California as the "Josephine Olp Weeks Chair and Professor of Literature" as well as the "Professor of African and American studies in Residence" at Harvard during the academic year. Kincaid is an award-winning writer...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 May 1949
persons known ifs
I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.
writing certain i-can
I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always writing-but in my head.
weed garden digging-a-hole
I love planting. I love digging holes, putting plants in, tapping them in. And I love weeding, but I don't like tidying up the garden afterwards.
thinking years people
Something settiled inside me, something heavy and hard. It stayed there, and i could not think of one thing to make it go away. I thought, So this must be living, this must be the beginning of the time people later refer to as 'years ago, when I was young'.
believe writing thinking
All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself-though, thank God I had never committed them to paper-I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn't hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don't believe in that at all anymore.
children writing small-child
I can write anywhere. I actually wrote more than I ever did when I had small children. My children were never a hindrance.
writing crap ifs
If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.
thinking cooking dishes
I like cooking, but I think someone else ought to do the dishes.
racism black grew
I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!
successful failing afraid-to-fail
I didn't know it was possible to be successful as a writer, so I wasn't afraid to fail.
writing calling holy
Writing is not a profession. It's a calling. It's almost holy.
world melancholy abandoned
I like melancholy. I like to pretend that I'm alone in the world and I'm just sort of abandoned.
crush travel boredom
Every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this.
misunderstood used being-misunderstood
I’m so used to being misunderstood,