Jamaica kincaid family

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Born in Antigua in the West Indies, Jamaica Kincaid has cultivated a voice distinct from male Caribbean writers such as Derek Walcott and Caryl Phillips. Using life to inspire fiction, Kincaid often explores the complexity of mother-daughter relationships, the effects and aftereffects of colonialism, and alienation more generally. Her work also transcends Afro-centric and feminist perspectives. Her deceptively simple prose is marked by poetic lyricism, vivid imagery, and nonlinear time.

On May 25, 1949, she was born as Elaine Potter Richardson in St. John's, Antigua, an island that would not gain full independence from British colonial rule until 1981. The young girl never knew her biological father, a taxi driver named Roderick Potter. Her mother, Annie Richardson Drew, and stepfather, David Drew, nurtured Elaine as their only child until she was nine. During that time, she was well educated under the British educational system and won a scholarship to the Princess Margaret School. When she was nine, her life

Jamaica Kincaid

Antiguan-American writer (born 1949)

Jamaica Kincaid (; born Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson on May 25, 1949)[1] is an Antiguan–American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. Born in St. John's, the capital of Antigua and Barbuda, she now lives in North Bennington, Vermont, and is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence, Emerita at Harvard University.[2]

Biography

Kincaid was born in St. John's on the island of Antigua, on 25 May 1949.[3] She grew up in relative poverty with her mother, a literate, cultured woman and homemaker, and her stepfather, a carpenter.[3][4][5][6] She was very close to her mother until her three brothers were born in quick succession, starting when Kincaid was nine years old. After her brothers' births, she resented her mother, who thereafter focused primarily on the brothers' needs. Kincaid later recalled,

Our family money remained the same, but there were more people to feed and to clothe, and so everything got

“Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.”

—Jamaica Kincaid

One of the most decorated writers of her generation, Jamaica Kincaid is a writer with a clear, illuminating vision of humanity. Written in a deceptively simple and unadorned style, Kincaid’s books are informed by her status as an uprooted subject, born in the Caribbean island of Antigua, but living in North America. Kincaid deals with such universal themes as coming-of-age and the necessity of separation from parents and establishing identity.

After leaving Antigua for New York to work as an au pair, Kincaid studied photography at the New York School for Social Research and attended Franconia College in New Hampshire. A staff writer at The New Yorker from 1974-1996, she published her first book, a collection of pieces for The New Yorker called At the Bottom of the River, in 1983. Her first novel, Annie John, followed in 1985—the coming-of-age story of a willful ten-year-old growing up on Antig

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