Early life
Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson in St John's, Antigua, on May 25, 1949.[3] She grew up in relative poverty with her mother, a literate, cultured woman and homemaker, and her stepfather, a carpenter.[3][4][5][6] She was very close to her mother until her three brothers were born in quick succession, starting when Kincaid was nine years old. After her brothers' births, she resented her mother, who thereafter focused primarily on the brothers' needs. Kincaid later recalled,
Our family money remained the same, but there were more people to feed and to clothe, and so everything got sort of shortened, not only material things but emotional things. The good emotional things, I got a short end of that. But then I got more of things I didn't have, like a certain kind of cruelty and neglect.[5]
In a New York Times interview, Kincaid also said: "The way I became a writer was that my mother wrote my life for me and told it to me."[7]
Kincaid received (and frequently excelled in) a British education growing up, as Antigua did not gain independence from the United Kingdom until 1981.[3][5][8][9] Although she was intelligent and frequently tested at the top of her class, Kincaid's mother removed her from school at 16 to help support the family when her third and last brother was born, because her stepfather was ill and could no longer provide for the family.[5] In 1966, when Kincaid was 17, her mother sent her to Scarsdale, a wealthy suburb of New York City, to work as an au pair.[10] After this move, Kincaid refused to send money home; "she left no forwarding address and was cut off from her family until her return to Antigua 20 years later".[9]
Family
In 1979, Kincaid married the composer and Bennington College professor Allen Shawn, son of longtime The New Yorker editor William Shawn and brother of actor Wallace Shawn. The couple divorced in 2002. They have two children: a son, Harold, a graduate of Northeastern University, a music producer/songwriter who is the founder of Levelsoundz; and a daughter, Annie, who graduated from Harvard and now works in marketing. Kincaid is president of the official Levelsoundz Fan Club.
Kincaid is a keen gardener who has written extensively on the subject. She converted to Judaism in 2005.[11]
Career overview
While working as an au pair, Kincaid enrolled in evening classes at a community college.[12] After three years, she resigned from her job to attend Franconia College in New Hampshire on a full scholarship. She dropped out after a year and returned to New York,[3] where she started writing for teenage girls' magazine Ingénue, The Village Voice and Ms. magazine.[13][14] She changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid in 1973, when her writing was first published.[15] She described this name change as "a way for [her] to do things without being the same person who couldn't do them — the same person who had all these weights".[8] Kincaid explained that "Jamaica" is an English corruption of what Columbus called Xaymaca, the part of the world that she comes from, and "Kincaid" appeared to go well with "Jamaica".[16] Her short fiction appeared in The Paris Review, and in The New Yorker, where her 1990 novel Lucy was originally serialized.[17]
Kincaid's work has been both praised and criticized for its subject matter because it largely draws upon her own life and because her tone is often perceived as angry.[12] Kincaid counters that many writers draw upon personal experience, so to describe her writing as autobiographical and angry is not valid criticism.[4]
Kincaid was the 50th commencement speaker at Bard College at Simon's Rock in 2019.[18]
The New Yorker
As a result of her budding writing career and friendship with George W. S. Trow, who wrote many pieces for The New Yorker column "The Talk of the Town",[3][19] Kincaid became acquainted with New Yorker editor William Shawn, who was impressed with her writing.[12] He employed her as a staff writer in 1976 and eventually as a featured columnist for Talk of the Town for nine years.[12] Shawn's tutelage legitimized Kincaid as a writer and proved pivotal to her development of voice. In all, she was a staff writer for The New Yorker for 20 years.[20] She resigned from The New Yorker in 1996 when then editor Tina Brown chose actress Roseanne Barr to guest-edit an issue as an original feminist voice. Though circulation rose under Brown, Kincaid was critical of Brown's direction in making the magazine less literary and more celebrity-oriented.[12]
Kincaid recalls that when she was a writer for The New Yorker, she would often be questioned, particularly by women, on how she was able to obtain her position. Kincaid felt that these questions were posed because she was a young black woman "from nowhere… I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I'm writing for The New Yorker, I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people."[4]
Talk Stories was later published in 2001 as a collection of "77 short pieces Kincaid wrote for The New Yorker's 'Talk of the Town' column between 1974 and 1983".[21]
Recognition
In December 2021, Kincaid was announced as the recipient of the 2022 Paris Review Hadada Prize, the magazine's annual lifetime achievement award.[22]
