Jamaica Kincaid Biography Major Themes w. map of Antigua Synopsis of  Annie John Works Cited Related Sites Issues for Discussion:   Annie John "The Circling Hand" 'Columbus in Chains'  "A Walk to the Jetty" Annie John--Synopsis Jamaica Kincaid beautifully delineates hatred and fear, because she knows they are often a step away from love and obsession. At the start of Annie John, her 10-year-old heroine is engulfed in family happiness and safety. Though Annie  loves her father, she is all eyes for her mother. When she is almost 12, however, the idyll ends and she falls into deep disfavor. This inexplicable loss mars both lives, as each grows adept at public falsity and silent betrayal. The pattern is set, and extended: "And now I started a new series of betrayals of people and things I would have sworn only minutes before to die for." In front of Annie's father and the world, "We were politeness and kindness and love and laughter." Alone they are linked in loathing. Annie tries to imagine herself as someone in a book--an orphan or a girl with a wicked stepmother.  The trouble is, she finds, those characters' lives always end happily. Luckily for us, though not perhaps for her alter ego, Kincaid is too truthful a writer to provide such a finale. (from Reviews and Commentary for Annie John, Amazon)

Biography

• born in 1949 as Elaine Potter Richardson on the island of Antigua.
• Her stepfather, a carpenter, and her mother
• Received British education in Antigua.
• 1965: sent to Westchester, New York to work as an au pair. ("As the eldest of four, and the only girl, she was apprenticed to a seamstress, then plucked from school, where she was excelling, and sent to the US as an au pair ["really a servant"] from "Kincaid in Revolt". )
• 1967: studied photography at the New York School for Social Research after leaving the family for which she worked, and also attended Franconia College in New Hampshire for a year.
• Her first writing experience involved a series of articles for Ingenue magazine.
• In 1973, she changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid because her family disapproved of her writing. (About her name: "'Jamaica is an English corruption of what Columbus called Xaymaca.'" This renaming is a theme in Kincaid's works both fiction and non-fiction. According to Kincaid, renaming is a metaphor for conquest and colonial domination. )

Major Themes

• Kincaid and Angigue's English education/system


"I was always being told I should be something, and then my whole upbringing was something I was not: it was English." (Cudjoe 219.  Cudjoe, Selwyn R., ed. Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International
Conference. Wellesley: Calaloux Publications, 1990.)

Antigua became self-governing in 1967, but did not achieve the status of an independent nation within the Commonwealth until 1981. Within the structure of the British educational system imposed upon Antiguans, Kincaid grew to "detest everything about England, except the literature."  (Vorda 79).  She felt first-hand the negative effects of British colonialism as the colonists attempted to turn Antigua "into England" and the natives "into English" without regard for the native culture or homeland (Kincaid 24).  The effects of colonialism serve as the major theme for A Small Place in which Kincaid expresses her anger both at the colonists and at the Antiguans for failing to fully achieve their independence.   (from Jamaica Kincaid).

•  Mother-Daughter relationship and a daugher's socialization
• Kincaid about her mother: She  "should never have had children."

"She loves us when we're dying - not when we're thriving because then we don't need her." (from Kincaid in Revolt )
• Mother-Daughter Relationship in Annie John

Major Factors:
1.  Caribbean society: a male-dominated society in which the men are allowed to be irresponsible about housework, and enjoy sexual relationships outside marriage.
2. Mother as a social institution
3. A young girl's socialization: feminie Oedipus complex
• Mother-Daughter Relationship in Annie John: Examples

 -- "The Circling Hand" -- Forced to separate herself from the mother; sent to be educated, witnessing the parents¡¦ sexual intercourse (primal scene).
 -- "Columbus in Chain": mother turned into a crocodile p. 84
 -- being called a slut by her mother after conversing with a boy -- "Well, . . .  like mother like daughter"  (p. 102)
 
 

• Annie John
• Annie's independence process
• Pre-occupation with death;
• Pre-Oedipal symbiosis with the mother
• Girl friends (Gwen, Red Girl)
• Resisting British education (Columbus in Chain)
•  Exploring her own sexuality
•  fascination for the father (112-13)
•  Illness; grandmother's (Ma Chess)  care-taking -- a substitute for the mother (pp. 125-26)
• Leaving Antigua
• "The Circling Hand"  'Columbus in Chains' "A Walk to the Jetty"
• "The Circling Hand"

1. The symbiotic state: (pp. 13-25)
Examples of the daughter's complete identification with the mother.  pp. 13- 19
•  What kind of gender model does the mother offer Annie?  What role does the father take in this part?   e.g. p. 13-14; 25
•  What's the significance of the trunk?  P. 20


 2. Separation: the changes

• in Annie's body p. 25; p. 27
• her dresses p. 26
• her schooling -- p. 29
• the mother's expectations of her: pp. 28-29


3. the primal scene

•  the importance of the circling hand?  P. 30
•  What role does the father take after this scene?

1. How is the narrator related to the pupils (Ruth and Hilarene) and the teachers (esp. Ms. Edward)?
2. How do you characterize Ms. Edward's way of education?  e.g. pp. 400, 401 of our Reader.
3. Where do we see the narrator's postcolonial thinking?  Why is Columbus important?
4. Another interesting issue here is family relationships.  Why is Columbus related to the narrator's grandfather?  How is the narrator related to her own mother?

•  Name, address, her listing of what she "never wants to see"; joy at not having to see them.  pp. 130-132.; her attention at what's "hers" and what's on her p. 134-35.
• remembering a lot; the moment of getting out of bed 133
• contradictory feelings at the wharf: 144; 145, 147

• What kind of family does Annie have?  P. 132
• How do they look at her day of departure? pp. 134-36
• Their interaction: p. 136
• Gwen  137

• Ms. Dulcie the seamstress, p. 138
• first experience of buying things 139
• saving money
• interests that she has outgrown: glasses, porcelain dog,
• library
• Indivuation through complete separation

Related Sites

Please read the following two introduction to Kincaid.
They will help you understand her position and her views of motherhood.

• "Kincaid in Revolt". (local) a writer who challenges notions of sexuality, motherhood and mother countries
• Jamaica Kincaid Hates Happy Endings: Mother Jones Interview with a short Cinderella-type bio

• Jamaica Kincaid from Postcolonial Studies web site of Emory University
• Bio with photo
• Information on Kincaid and her books, including an interview
• Mother Jones Interview
• Interview
• Short background on Kincaid connected to a guide for reading A Small Place
• Summary of Kincaid's view of Antigua in A Small Place; Antigua as a travel destination
• Personal history, focusing on The Autobiography of My Mother