Jamaica Kincaid (1949- )

A selective list of literary criticism for Antiguan-American novelist Jamaica Kincaid, including signed articles by recognized scholars, peer and editor reviewed articles, and web sites that follow MLA guidelines for web pages.

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literary criticism

Yost, David. "A tale of three Lucys: Wordsworth and Bronte in Kincaid's Antiguan Villette" [and William Wordsworth and Charlotte Bronte]. Melus, June 2006

A summary of Jamaica Kincaid's achievement from the BBC World Service

An introduction to Jamaica Kincaid from the postcolonial web project at Emory U

An overview of Jamaica Kincaid's work, from the World Literatures in English Web Site, Fu Jen University, Taiwan

A journalistic article on Jamaica Kincaid's My Brother and her themes. By Sarah Kerr in Slate, Oct. 1997

A reading group guide for The Autobiography of My Mother, with an introduction to Jamaica Kincaid's themes and some discussion questions, from Penguin Putnam

A review of The Autobiography of My Mother, from the Santa Clara Metro newspaper, Feb. 1996, by Tai Moses

A review of My Brother, by Elizabeth Manus in the Boston Phoenix, Oct. 1997

Brief review of Talk Stories (2001), 77 short pieces Jamaica Kincaid wrote for The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" column between 1974 and 1983, in which she developed her voice and style. Reviewed by Sienna Powers in January Magazine

Ippolito, Emilia. "Jamaica Kincaid." Literary Encyclopedia. Eds. Robert Clark, Emory Elliott, Janet Todd. An introduction to the poet, from a database that provides signed literary criticism by experts in their field, and is available to individuals for a reasonably-priced subscription.

Interviews

Jamaica Kincaid tells about the process of writing Mr. Potter, in a NYTimes feature "Writers on Writing," June 1997

An interview with Jamaica Kincaid, The Missouri Review, 15, 2 (1992)

An interview with Jamaica Kincaid from Mother Jones magazine, Sept. 1997

An interview with Jamaica Kincaid in Salon.com, May 1998

Schultheis, Alexandra. "Family Matters in Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother." "Ostensibly fiction, yet blurring the lines between genres, Kincaid’s writing uses long lyrical sentences which transform logical oppositions into grammatical companions in order to insist as much on a shared history of black Caribbean women as it does on the speaker’s right to define herself out of that history. Thus the text refuses any nostalgic return to coherent subjectivity, essential gender or racial identifications, or firm national identity, offering instead a voice at once assertive, self-critical, questioning, and angry whose 'very composure…is so unsettling' to our fixed notions of subject and nation." Jouvert 5.2

Simmons, Diane. "Jamaica Kincaid and the Canon: In Dialogue With Paradise Lost and Jane Eyre." Simmons discusses the effects of reading the English classics on the Antiguan schoolgirl Jamaica Kincaid. Melus, Summer, 1998.

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