Reading Notes W15: Kincaid, Part B

Jamaica Kincaid (1144-1146)

  • Jamaica Kincaid rose from humble beginnings to become a successful contemporary writer, well known for her books and magazine articles bout the immigrant experience 
  • these writings often used first-person narration or imagined dialogue
  • she grew up in the island's capital city of St. Johns
  • at school, Kincaid was a quick student, taking a special interest in history and botany
  • at 13, when she was about to take university qualifying examinations, her stepfather fell ill, forcing her to leave school and help raise her siblings
  • she was angry and dispirited so she withdrew into booka
  • at 17, she accepted a job as a nanny in the U.S. and for 4 years lived with families in the New York City borough of Manhattan and in suburban Scarsdale 
  • she earned a general equivalency diploma and briefly attended a college in New Hampshire before deciding she was too old
  • Kincaid's first collection of short stories, At the Bottom of the River, appeared in 1983
  • her second and third novels draw on her own and her family's experiences in Antigua 
  • throughout her career, she retained a strong commitment to issues of identity, colonialism, and the color line (1145)
  • "Girl" (1978), was the first piece of fiction that Kincaid published
  • the speaker is a mother giving instructions to her daughter on the rules and rite of womanhood
  • the setting is Antigua, inferred from the story's details
  • as the speaker discusses with equal matter-of-factness such topics as keeping house, enduring a cruel husband, and aborting unwanted pregnancies, a picture emerges of the harshness if countless women's lives, not just in the setting but throughout history and across the globe (1145)
  • during the lecture, the mother stresses how important it is for young woman to maintain a sense of sexual propriety
  • the woman warns her daughter repeatedly that she will look like a "slut" if she does not behave properly
  • the listener has not left childhood entirely, but the early reference to washing "your little cloths" indicates that she has reached puberty and that the time when these instructions will come into use is not far off (1145)

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 5, 2018 at 8:56 PM

    I wanted to comment on your reading notes because I noticed you take them similar to the way I take them! I find that I actually prefer to make notes on the background information provided before the story because I feel like it’s important in helping you understand more about the story you’re reading. I also like putting things into short bullet form rather than trying to piece together coherent thoughts as notes.

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