Imagine your culture being thrown aside and a new one was all that was taught to you? How would you react to it? In this story the author, Jamaica Kincaid, is talking about how she reacted to this and what happened to her. The author grows up in a place where England colonization had taken place. She grew up in Antigua, a small island in the Caribbean. She is taught all her life about England, a place she has never seen. At an early age she started to realize that the English had taken over her culture
by Doris Lessing and the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes. There was also one writing that I read that went against my idea of family and made me happy that this wasn’t the way that my family acted as I grew up, that was “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid. And while some authors lean their writing one direction or another, Adrienn... ... middle of paper ... ...s us think that this can happen to any of us, even if we think that we are loved and in a family. This helps us realize how important
African in her origins. Through her writings, Kincaid attempts to assert her present self-an Antiguan woman-and all that her present self signifies. Perhaps such a synthesis-or even just the struggle for it-is the best that any of us can hope for. Works Cited Gordimer, Nadine. "Where Do Whites Fit In?" Hoy and DiYanni. 292-298. Hoy, Pat C. II and Robert DiYanni, eds. Encounters: Readings and the World. 1st ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997. Kincaid, Jamaica. "On Seeing England for the First
Mothers in Mother to Son by Langston Hughes and GIRL by Jamaica Kincaid In order to build a strong, grounded house a person must use brick and cement. A brick is used to build the house, but yet it is the cement that molds and keeps the house together and intact. A family encompasses the same basic rules and needs. The father is the provider for his family, sort of like the brick, but it is the mother who holds the responsibility of teaching right from wrong, and they are the ones who keep strong
Comparing Girl by Jamaica Kincaid and A&P by John Updike Within every story or poem, there is always an interpretation made by the reader, whether right or wrong. In doing so, one must thoughtfully analyze all aspects of the story in order to make the most accurate assessment based on the literary elements the author has used. Compared and contrasted within the two short stories, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, and John Updike’s “A&P,” the literary elements character and theme are made evident. These
Many critics of The Autobiography of my Mother have remarked on the unrealistic facets of Xuela's extremist character. Her lack of remorse, her emotional detachment, her love of the dirty and "impure," and her consuming need for total control over everyone and everything around her give her an almost mythic quality. A more well-rounded, humanistic character would have doubts and failings that Xuela does not seem to possess. In light of Xuela's deep-seated resentment of authority, stubborn love of
An Evolving Relationship in The Circling Hand An evolving mother-daughter relationship is the focus of Jamaica Kincaid s autobiographical The Circling Hand. Like the narrator, Kincaid grew up in Antigua as the only child her mother and carpenter father. Also like the narrator, Kincaid admits her mother kept everything she ever wore. This narrative is a coming of age story, in which this dynamic and unusual mother-daughter relationship plays an important role. Through the beginning bliss
bifurcatory. Works Cited Empson, William. Milton's God. London: Chatto and Windus, 1961. Fallon, Stephen. Milton Among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England. Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 1991. Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy. New York: Penguin, 1990. Milton, John. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. Merritt Y. Hughes. New York: Macmillan, 1957.
Abandonment in Jamaica Kincaid's Autobiography of My Mother Xuela, the protagonist of Jamaica Kincaid's novel, The Autobiography of My Mother , comments, "I felt I did not want to belong to anyone, that since the one person I would have consented to own me had never lived to do so, I did not want anyone to belong to me" (112). The outward coldness of this statement is clearly observed, but it is the underlying statement Xuela is making that is truly a significant theme within the novel; Xuela's
words. In The Autobiography of My Mother , Jamaica Kincaid uses language in a way that is very simplistic, yet highly effective. Her writing is direct and to the point. There is neither flowery wording not complex sentence structure. Without the distractions of overflowing language, the depth of Kincaid's material comes through with particular effectiveness. It is the simplest of writing elements, that of repetition and opposition, that Kincaid uses to create a novel rich in language and eloquence
The Strain of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Annie John Jamaica Kincaid accurately portrays how adolescence can strain mother- daughter relationships. The mother- daughter relationships are universal but "it is not clear why we avoid the topic"(Gerd). The father- daughter relationships and the mother- sons relationships are the issues mostly talked about. In Jamaica Kincaid's novel, Annie John, she explains and gives insight into mother- daughter relationships. In Annie John,
who escapes a West Indian island to North America to work as an au pair for Mariah and Lewis, a young couple, and their four girls. As in her other books—especially Annie John—Kincaid uses the mother-daughter relationship as a means to expose some of her underlying themes. Unlike in her novel Annie John, however, Kincaid does not specify which West Indian Island Lucy hails from. It also seems to be set in the post colonial period and there is evidence that this island was a colony of England. Evidence
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts
- A Small Place In the work “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, she discusses many things she is not happy with: the ignorant tourist, whom she addresses as the reader, Antigua’s corrupt government, the passiveness of the Antiguan people, and the English who colonized Antigua. This work can be discusses as a polemic because of Kincaid’s simplistic diction, and very confrontational tone throughout the book. From the beginning, Kincaid introduces the tourist, whom she describes as a white middle-class
become so insignificant that nothing the do will be able to pull themselves away from the barren abyss. More or less this is what happens for the main female characters in both Hills Like White Elephants by Earnest Hemingway, and Girl by Jamaica Kincaid. Both characters find themselves isolated as they struggle to support the social mask that acts as a double-edged sword in that it protects ones emotional well being but also isolates they wearer from those around them. In Kincaid’s Girl, the story
to buy a bed. She described herself as being a struggling writer, who did not know how to write, but sheer determination and a fortunate encounter with the editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn who set the epitome for her writing success. Ms. Kincaid was a West-Indian American writer who was the first writer and the first individual from her island of Antigua to achieve this goal. Her genre of work includes novelists, essayist, and a gardener. Her writing style has been described as having dreamlike
into a lady, and shows the age gap between the mother and the daughter. The mother has certain beliefs that she is trying to pass to her daughter for her well-being, but the daughter is confused by this regimented life style. The author, Jamaica Kincaid, uses various tones to show a second person point of view and repetition to demonstrate what these responsibilities felt like, how she had to behave based on her social standing, and how to follow traditional customs. The narrator is very specific
Jamaica Kincaid Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson on May 25, 1949 in St. John’s, Antigua (“Jamaica,” Caribbean). A Caribbean writer hailed, “A significant voice in contemporary literature,” (qtd. in “Jamaica,” Encyclopedia) she is well known for her personal and honest works of short fiction, novels and essays (“Jamaica,” Encyclopedia). In her work, Kincaid “explores the tenuous relationship between mother and daughter as well as themes of anti-colonialism,” (qtd. in “Jamaica,” Encyclopedia)
“Girl,”written by Jamaica Kincaid, is a prose poem about the relationship between a mother and daughter. In reality, it reflects the actual living background in Kincaid's time by listing a series of important sentences; as read, it shows that her mother disciplined her for a certain lifestyle; moreover, now she wants the same living for her daughter. In this poem, the setting, tone, and characters engage and work together to create an acute description of a day-to-day conversation between mother
Jamaica Kincaid, the author of many famous short stories, writes Girl to reflect on a relationship between mother and daughter. For nine years, Kincaid was an only child and her father was never in the picture, therefore she had a very close relationship with her mother. Although, things began to change when Kincaid’s mother began to have more children. At the age of seventeen, Kincaid left for New York to attend school and earn money for her family. The mother in Girl expects a lot from her daughter