Decolonize Black History Month

Day 17: Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid was born as Elaine Potter Richardson on May 25, 1949. She was born in Antigua and was a gifted child, learning to read at age 3 and consistently being at the head of her class. At age 16 she moved to Scarsdale, New York in order to work as an au pair. There she earned her high school diploma and began working on a degree in photography at Franconia College. However, writing was the art form that Kincaid excelled at. After leaving college she changed her name and began writing for magazines such as The Village Voice, Ingenue, The Paris Review and The New Yorker. She maintained a column at The New Yorker for 8 years, leaving in 1983.

Kincaid's first collection of short stories was titled At the Bottom of the River and was published in 1983. Her first novel, Annie John, was published in 1985. Since then she has published short stories, novels, nonfiction, and even a children's book. Her work has won many awards such as the Guggenheim Award for Fiction (1985), the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction (1999) and the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award (2014). Though she never finished college, Kincaid has been awarded honorary doctorates from Tufts University and Brandeis University. She is a member of the faculty at Harvard University.

“Life has a truth to it, and it’s complicated—it’s love and it’s hatred. Love and hatred don’t take turns; they exist side by side at the same time. And one’s duty, one’s obligation every day, is to choose to follow the nobler one. And if the nobler one is something one can’t pursue, then the lesser, the ignoble one, is what is left. It’s there. It’s present. There are things that make us choose, on certain days, on certain nights, the opposite of love, in all its variations.”  Interview with Lauren K. Alleyne, “Does Truth Have a Tone,” Guernica, June 17, 2013.

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