Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid’s real name was Elaine Potter Richardson. She was born in St John’s, Antigua in the West Indies on May 25th, 1949. She lived with her mother, Annie Richardson Drew, and stepfather, David Drew, who was a carpenter. Elaine never knew her biological father, but was told that he was a taxi driver named Roderick Potter. Richardson was very close to her mother as she was the only child for nine years. She attended school and received a British education in Antigua. Elaine was most often at the top of her class. Elaine’s mother had three more children, all sons in a very quick succession, beginning when Elaine was nine and with this, Elaine relationship with her mother changed. After her brothers were born, she was treated poorly and neglected by both her mother and step-father.

“I don’t know if having other children was the cause for our relationship changing- it might have changed as I entered adolescence, but her attention went elsewhere. And also 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 the things I didn’t have, like a certain kind of cruelty and neglect. In the end it didn’t matter. When I was first a young person it did matter a lot because I didn’t know what had happened to me. If I hadn’t become a writer I don’t know what would have happened to me; that was a kind of self rescuing.” Jamaica Kincaid

In this audio, Jamaica Kincaid talks about her relationship with her mother. She discusses how she became such a wonderful reader and so interested in books. Since her mother was very interested in reading she taught Jamaica how to read at a very young age. This allowed Kincaid’s mother to still keep her freedom of reading and being involved in stories and not have to be disturbed by Jamaica.

Listen: Web Extra: Kincaid on How Reading Empowered Her
Real MediaWindows

At the age of seventeen, Richardson’s step-father became ill and could no longer support his family. Her mother pulled Richardson out of school, even though she was very intelligent, and sent her to Westchester New York to work as an au pair to an American family. She was supposed to make money for her family but she refused to send it back to her home land, and she did not talk to her family or open her mother’s letters.

Richardson, while working as an au pair, was supposed to be studying to eventually become a nurse. Richardson later resigned as an au pair, quit nursing school and began looking for new jobs. Her first writing experience involved a series of articles for Ingenue magazine. She also had a job as a fact checker with Forbes magazine. She became friends with a professor Myles Ludwig. Later in her life she wrote him asking for a job, and he hired her to work at Art Direction magazine. With this job Richardson went to the New School for Social Research where she studied photography. She also attended Franconia College in New Hampshire for a year, which later leads to her being eligible to work at the New Yorker.

Richardson decided to change her name to Jamaica Kincaid from Elaine Potter Richardson so she could write anonymously. She knew that her family disapproved of her writing and so by changing her name the people of Antigua would not know it was her. Kincaid found a writing job with the New Yorker magazine and wrote in her own column “The Talk of the Town”. She met the editor of the magazine, William Shawn. He encouraged Kincaid to write fiction, which were then often published as installments in the New Yorker. Kincaid resigned from the New Yorker in 1996, after the death of her youngest brother Devon, died from AIDS at the age of 33.

This audio has Jamaica Kincaid explain how she became a writer. At a young she began “writing” and she soon realized that the reason she was fired from many of her jobs because she was not dedicated to these, but instead writing. Kincaid was not confident in her writing, but she knew that “this” was the way that she wanted to write. She doubted that she would ever succeed as a writer, but she would not let this stand in her way.

Listen: Web Extra: Kincaid on Becoming a Writer
Real MediaWindows

While Kincaid was working for the New Yorker and being encouraged by her editor Shawn, she married his son Allen. Together they had two children, Annie in 1985 and Harold in 1989. Kincaid and her family now live in North Bennington, Vermont, where she lectures on African and African American Studies and on English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. Kincaid has received many awards and honors. From the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, she won the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award for her work At the Bottom of the River. She has also received the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund writer’s award.

Works Cited

Emory University---English Department "Where Courageous Inquiry Leads" 3 Mar. 2009 .

Intersections: Jamaica Kincaid and the Literature of Defiance. 2 Feb. 2004. Npr. 27 Feb. 2009 .

JAMAICA KINCAID. New York State Writers Institute. 2 Mar. 2009 .

By: Sarah Burns and Lindsey Sanders