On this day in 1949, Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson in St. John’s, Antigua.
Kincaid grew up in a home with her mother, Annie Richardson Drew, and her stepfather, David Drew. She was a student, but she had to stop attending school at 16 because her mother needed her to help take care of the family. In 1966, Kincaid went to Scarsdale, New York, to work as a pair. This move took her away from Antigua and the expectations people had of her, and also gave her the space she needed to think about her family, where she came from, and the power of those things.
In New York, she took classes and ceased doing domestic work. She started writing for magazines, and in 1973, she decided to change her name to Jamaica Kincaid. She said she did this so she could write without being held by her past. Her first published work led to her writing for Ingénue, The Village Voice and Ms. Magazine. In 1976, she started working at The New Yorker. The editor, William Shawn, hired her as a staff writer. Kincaid wrote for the magazine for 20 years and even wrote for the “Talk of the Town” section.
Kincaid’s stories and essays often come from her life, and she does not like it when people try to label her work as just being about her life or being angry. Her work examines the problems between mothers and daughters, what it is like to go to school in a place, racism, class, gender and the power of British and American cultures. Her books include “Annie John,” “Lucy,” “The Autobiography of My Mother,” “Mr. Potter. See Now Then.” Her nonfiction book “A Small Place” is one of her most talked-about works. It criticizes colonialism and tourism in Antigua in a straightforward way.
Jamaica Kincaid became known as a gardener and a writer about gardens. She paid attention to plants and the land. Later, she lived in North Bennington, Vermont. She became a professor of African American studies at Harvard University.
Kincaid is important because she took control of her voice and wrote about Antigua, America, mothers, daughters, servants and power without warping the harsher realities.
