Comments on: On Reading Jamaica Kincaid

By: Reading Room V | Wadadli Pen

Reading Room V | Wadadli Pen — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 06:23:13 +0000

[…] This article is about how Reagan K. Reynolds, a self-described “a white American in my early twenties, raised in a privileged home where education was never considered an interference of cultural ethics but a foundation for them”, engaged with the writing of Antigua and Barbuda’s own Jamaica Kincaid. She said, among other things: “Kincaid uses her pen to reach over and poke at my own social constructs built within the boundaries of gender, race, occupation and education. The floor beneath who I think I am and who I think others are comes apart in an earthquake of literary moments. These moments exist because authors like Kincaid are brave enough to create them…I have become addicted to the uncomfortable sensation that occurs when discovering a perspective that is unlike my own.” […]

By: Joanne C. Hillhouse

Joanne C. Hillhouse — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 06:18:33 +0000

I too am an Antiguan writer and agree that Kincaid has that unique gift to compel and unsettle her readers, all in beautiful, flowing language into which she’s weaved layers of meaning. As a Caribbean reader growing up in a world where ironically we had limited access to literature from our own world, I am all too familiar with how reading literature from a perspective unlike your own can educate you about other ways of seeing the world and yourself in it; that said, I am happy at the amount of literature now coming out of the region and to be a part of the newer wave of that still emerging literary tradition myself, a part of the process of examining ourselves and our place in the world. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. The page attached to my name is my author page, but I will be sharing a link to your article in the reading room of the blog I run as part of a programme to help nurture and showcase the literary arts from Antigua and Barbuda. I like to share interesting things when I find them. I hope you’ll check out both my blogs and my books as well.

By: Women Writers, Women, Books

Women Writers, Women, Books — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 21:02:47 +0000

Reagan, Thank you very much for submitting this beautiful piece on how deeply you’ve been affected by reading Jamaica Kincaid. It is just this kind of testament about an author that motivates a reader like me to pick up an author. I look forward to future posts you may be interested in writing. – Anora McGaha, Editor