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
writing thinking race
People think if you describe someone with glistening brown skin you're writing about race, as if the whole of the African diaspora is in someone's brown skin.
writing thinking who-i-am
I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.
book writing finished
When I write a book, I hope to be beyond mortal by the time I'm finished.
writing mets dismissal
My writing has always been met with derision or dismissal.
writing editors rivers
The resistance to my work, and to my way of writing, has been there from the beginning. The first things I wrote were these short short stories collected in At the Bottom of the River, and at least three of them are one sentence long. They were printed in The New Yorker, over the objections of many of the editors in the fiction department.
eye writing dark
If I describe a person's physical appearance in my writing, which I often do, especially in fiction, I never say someone is "black" or "white." I may describe the color of their skin - black eyes, beige skin, blue eyes, dark skin, etc. But I'm not talking about race.
writing race people
Race as a subject only comes about because of what I look like. If I say something truthfully, people say "Oh, she's so angry." If I write about a married person who lives in Vermont, it becomes "Oh, she's autobiographical."
writing two justice
What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the different ways human beings organize the two.
writing want
When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself.
writing islands wanted
I come from the small island of Antigua and I always wanted to write; I just didn't know that it was possible.
writing successful careers
The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it's the wrong thing. It's not a profession.
writing thinking way
I think in many ways the problem that my writing would have with an American reviewer is that Americans find difficulty very hard to take. They are inevitably looking for a happy ending.
jobs writing jokes
A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job.
writing people important
In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other. And the important thing isn't whether I'm angry. The more important thing is, is it true? Do these things really happen?