Jamaica Kincaid: A Critical Companion

With the publication of her novel Annie John in 1985, Jamaica Kincaid entered the ranks of the best novelists of her generation. Her three autobiographical novels, Annie John, Lucy, and Autobiography of My Mother, and collection of short stories, At the Bottom of the River, touch on the universal theme of coming of age and the female adolescent's need to sever her ties to her mother. This angst is couched in the social landscape of post-colonial Antigua, a small Caribbean island whose legacy of racism affects Kincaid's protagonists. Her fiction rewrites the history of the Caribbean from a West Indies perspective and this milieu colors the experiences of her characters.