Identity is a force that has the potential to both unite and alienate groups and individuals. While belonging to a group can enrich one’s value of their own identity and foster meaningful connections, it also creates barriers that minimize...

In her novel Between the Acts, Virginia Wolf explores the dichotomy that arises when two entirely separate social classes live under one roof together. Likewise, Jamaica Kincaid gives an intimate portrayal of a young au pair working in a wealthy,...

All human beings spend the first nine months of their lives in their motherâs womb. From the moment of birth, we wrestle with the notion of âmother:â? we love this woman and feel intense connections to her, and yet we inevitably need to separate...

In the beginning of Jean Rhys' novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette Cosway, a young creole woman, lives in poverty with her mother, Annette, and her brother, Pierre, on the island of Jamaica. In the society in which they live, Antoinette is...

Jamaica Kincaid's novel, Lucy, revolves, in large part, around the immigration and acclimation experiences of the title character, who has left her small Caribbean island to forge a new life in New York City. Yet there is another female in this...

Most teenagers go through a time when they believe that their parents are too overbearing and strict with them. Although this is a normal feeling to have on occasion growing up, Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Lucy reveals the intense situation of an...

Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth are texts primarily concerned with the process and results of colonization. Both follow the progression of the post-colonized generations, and both depict the struggle...

The characters in Ana Castillo’s So Far From God and Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother each straddle a line between two worlds representing old and new, the conqueror and the defeated. Kincaid’s narrator, Xuela Claudette Richardson,...

In the novel Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid, the title character faces the reality that she must grow up, detach from her parents, and establish an identity independent from that of her mother’s -- that the beautiful childhood she once had cannot...

As a Caribbean author, Jamaica Kincaid submerges Annie John, the novel, in rich sea symbolism. Living on the island of Antigua, and with Dominican parentage, the novel Annie John is immersed in deep, sea imagery, in which the author connects Annie...

Colonialism pervades Annie John (1985) by Jamaica Kincaid as a theme underlying the action in the eventful life of a little girl and her coming of age into adolescence. Colonialism is defined as that “governing system by which an imperial nation...

Self-identity is the personal recognition of one’s individuality especially after a period of ignorance about one’s interests, abilities, weaknesses, characteristics, and motivations. In Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” and Kincaid’s “At the Bottom of...

At the Bottom of the River is a unified collection of stories that share similar themes by Jamaica Kincaid. Based on the stories, the characters throughout this collection are the same people. Most notably, the mother and daughter characters whose...

Mothers usually have their children’s best interest at heart, guiding them through life at an attempt to prevent offspring from repeating their own mistakes. In the short story, “Girl,” Kincaid depicts her teenage years after her mother gave birth...

Jamaica Kincaid has portrayed troubled mother-daughter relationships extensively throughout her work, but her 1978 story “Girl," from her first short story collection At the Bottom of the River, remains her most succinct depiction of this theme....

Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl communicates strong messages about both society’s expectations of women, and the way that certain things told to someone can have a large impact on them. The piece is written in the form of a continuous list. This style...

From the point of view of a reader, it is clear that Jamaica Kincaid is not satisfied with the way Antigua is now. By comparing pre-colonial Antigua with colonial and post-colonial Antigua, Kincaid creates a novel that is anti-tourist and...

In the Western world, the Caribbean has long been viewed as an Edenic paradise. As a result, it has attracted legions of tourists from all over the world seeking an escape from the crushing banality of their day-to-day existence. While popular...

In A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid forces the reader to take on the role of a tourist as she brings them through the town of Antigua, criticising the moral ugliness of tourism and the negative consequences of European Imperialism as she does so....

Woven between Jamaica Kincaid’s emotionally charged memoir of Antigua is a strong rhetorical message to her audience to try and be different than those of them - middle class North American/European tourists - who came before to her land. These...

Throughout A Small Place, written by Jamaica Kincaid and Siddhartha, written by Hermann Hesse, the concept of the home plays a central role to them both. This concept is explored by each text quite extensively, and it is very significant in them....

During the 19th and 20th centuries, the success of large nations was driven by the process of colonization. Colonialism, the practice of gaining full or partial political control over another county by occupying it with settlers and exploiting...

In her work, “To Name is to Possess”, the author, Jamaica Kincaid, vilifies the possessive mentality that has captured human minds for centuries. While disparaging this class of conquerors, Kincaid connects human conquest to our dominant...