21 Facts About Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid grew up in relative poverty with her mother, a literate, cultured woman and homemaker, and her stepfather, a carpenter.

Jamaica Kincaid was very close to her mother until her three brothers were born in quick succession, starting when Kincaid was nine years old.

Jamaica Kincaid received, and frequently excelled in, a British education growing up, as Antigua did not gain independence from the United Kingdom until 1981.

In 1966, when Jamaica Kincaid was 17, her mother sent her to Scarsdale, a wealthy suburb of New York City, to work as an au pair.

In 1979, Jamaica 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.

Jamaica Kincaid is a keen gardener who has written extensively on the subject.

Jamaica Kincaid dropped out after a year and returned to New York, where she started writing for the teenage girls' magazine Ingenue, The Village Voice, and Ms.

Jamaica Kincaid changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid in 1973, when her writing was first published.

Jamaica 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.

Jamaica Kincaid was the 50th commencement speaker at Bard College at Simon's Rock in 2019.

Jamaica Kincaid employed her as a staff writer in 1976 and eventually as a featured columnist for Talk of the Town for nine years.

Jamaica Kincaid 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.

Jamaica 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.

In December 2021, Jamaica Kincaid was announced as the recipient of the 2022 Paris Review Hadada Prize, the magazine's annual lifetime achievement award.

One of Jamaica Kincaid's contributions according to Henry Louis Gates, Jr, African-American literary critic, scholar, writer, and public intellectual, is that:.

Jamaica Kincaid never feels the necessity of claiming the existence of a black world or a female sensibility.

Susan Sontag has commended Jamaica Kincaid's writing for its "emotional truthfulness," poignancy, and complexity.

Jamaica Kincaid's writing has been described as "fearless" and her "force and originality lie in her refusal to curb her tongue".

Jamaica Kincaid's writing is largely influenced by her life circumstances even though she discourages readers from taking her fiction literally.

Jamaica Kincaid worked for Arlen, who would become a colleague at The New Yorker, as an au pair and is the figure whom the father in Lucy is based on.

Jamaica Kincaid's writing stresses deep social and even political commentary, as Harold Bloom cites as a reason why the "literary qualities" of her work tend to be less of a focus for critics.