What happens to someone when the familiar becomes foreign? In Jamaica Kincaid’s novel, Annie John, an Antiguan girl, Annie, experiences coming-of-age troubles, including finding acceptance in her individuality and familial ties, whilst freeing herself from societal expectations. In the final chapter, Annie John goes off to England to study nursing. Similarly, Jamaica Kincaid’s biographical essay on her experience, “On Seeing England for the First Time”, where she disappointedly recounts her travels, raises questions as to how the two compare. Through their shared feelings of disconnectedness and displacement, their different perspectives of England, and their questioning of identity, Kincaid’s pieces emphasize the evident similarity in Annie’s …show more content…
Through this, she rebels against her mother in a way to release her anger, by acting out against her mother’s authority, seeking companionship from the Red Girl. The Red Girl, a girl Annie described as “a beautiful thing standing before [her]” (Annie John, 57), but also dressed differently to the rest of society, wearing a dirty dress, “skirt, and blouse tearing away from each other at one side” (Annie John, 57), symbolizing the restriction Annie feels as she feels confined by the societal norms placed by her mother that prevent her from expressing herself, underscoring Annie's challenges of feeling disconnected from her cultural roots and her desire for meaningful relationships during adolescence. Similarly, in Kincaid’s essay, she shares her sense of displacement. Before arriving in England, Jamaica had been surrounded by glorified opinions of the English, being “very familiar with the greatness of it” (“On seeing England”, 365), by the time she was a …show more content…
This highlights the disparity between the idea of a thing and the reality of it, and how this creates a sense of displacement. This feeling that she experiences, she describes that “[she] wanted to take it into [her] hands and tear [England] into little pieces and then crumble it up as if it were clay, child’s clay” (“On seeing England”, 371). This feeling of dishonesty she feels from the English emphasizes the betrayal and disillusionment she experiences, suggesting her need for connection has been shattered by the reality she is confronted with. When considering what would happen after the end of the novel for Annie John, Kincaid’s experience is similar in the fact that she would also experience that same feeling of displacement and longing for connection. On the contrary, Annie John and Kincaid differ in their views of England. Annie John is only exposed to what the Antiguans are allowed to see, through literature, holidays (like Victoria Day), and the culture they have instilled in Antigua. For instance, in the chapter Somewhere in Belgium, Annie dreams of living in Belgium, like the character from her favourite novel, Jane
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is about a girl who struggles finding her true self. Esperanza sees the typical figures like Sally and Rafaela. There is also her neighbor Marin shows the “true” identity for women on Mango Street. She also sees her mother is and is not like that at the same time. The main struggle that Esperanza has is with beauty. This explains why most of the negative people that Esperanza meets on Mango Street, and her gender, helped her see the mold she needed to fill in order to give herself an identity.
In this novel Roxanne is a famous soprano opera singer from Chicago. Bel Canto, one of the main characters that I chose to study was Roxane Coss. Roxanne is a famous soprano opera singer from Chicago.
The novel Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler is a beautifully thought out book that follows the complicated life of seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe as he seeks forgiveness for his sins both from himself and from God. Ian blamed himself for causing his older brother, Danny’s suicide and his guilt slowly ate away at him until he was drawn into the Church of Second Chance. By this time, Ian was in college and both Danny’s daughter and step-children were orphaned and being taken care of by his elderly parents. So Reverend Emmett, the pastor of Ian’s newfound church, decided that the only way Ian could find forgiveness from God and from himself was to quit college and offer up all his time to raise Danny’s children. The plot spans the time frame of about 25 years, in which time Ian and the three children slowly mature and become very developed, intricate characters, and the story takes place in the city of Baltimore through the years 1965 to 1990. Anne Tyler spins a very believable tale, using a writing style that easily reminds the reader how quickly life goes by.
"My Children are black. They don't look like your children. They know that they are black, and we want it recognized. It's a positive difference, an interesting difference, and a comfortable natural difference. At least it could be so, if you teachers learned to value difference more. What you value, you talk about.'" p.12
Through the use of emotional arguments and social appeal the author, Kincaid, gets the feeling across that she was a victim of England. To get you to feel like the victim she uses lots of metaphors. In the first paragraph she uses the one, “England was a special jewel all right and only special people got to wear it”(p.61). It is right here that the author sets the tone of the essay. She gives you the idea that she was not special enough to put on this gem of England. In doing this she makes a social appeal to anyone looking for a view of colonization. In using descriptive language she make you feel sorry for her in the how she had to “Draw a map of England”(p.63), at the end of every test.
This book is told from the diary of the main character, Sam Gribley. Sam is a boy full of determination. He didn’t give up and go home like everyone thought he would. He is strong of mind. After the first night in the freezing rain, with no fire and no food, he still went on. He is a born survivor. He lasted the winter, through storms, hunger, and loneliness, and came out on top even when everyone expected him to fail. “The land is no place for a Gribley” p. 9
It is said that a girl can often develop some of her mother's characteristics. Although, in their works, Kincaid, Hong Kingston and Davenport depict their protagonists searching for their own identities, yet being influenced in different ways by their mothers. Jamaica Kincaid's poem Girl, is about a young woman coming-of-age receiving helpful advice from her mother. In this poem, Kincaid addresses several issues where a mother's influence is beneficial to a young woman's character. The mother, or speaker, in Girl, offers advice to her daughter- advice that she otherwise would not learn without being told or shown. The mother advises the daughter about everyday tasks, and how to go about them properly (in her opinion).
The story “Girl” takes the form of a series of lessons; the point of the lessons, according to the mother, is to teach her daughter to behave and act properly. Kincaid’s complicated relationship with her mother comes out in the mother-daughter dynamic in the story. The mother mentions practical and helpful advice that will help her daughter keep a house of her own someday and also how to have a life of her own. It can be argued that in Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl” that the mother is loving towards her daughter because the mother is taking time to teaching her daughter how to be a woman, and because she wants to protect her in the future from society’s judgment.
Founding Father Alexander Hamilton overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles in his path to becoming the first Secretary of the Treasury. Born into poverty on a small Caribbean island, Hamilton endured his father’s abandonment of him and his mother’s death to illness. After a hurricane devastated his homeland, the seventeen-year- old Hamilton wrote a letter so powerful that people donated enough money for him to sail to New York, where his aptitude for writing propelled him to the highest ranks of the rebelling Continental Army. Similarly, authors James McPherson and Jamaica Kincaid rose from the depths of poverty through the potency of their words. Their success as writers stems from an aptitude for relaying impactful messages through their
The mother cautions her daughter endlessly, emphasising on how much she wants her to realize her role in the society by acting like a woman in order to be respected by the community and the world at large. Thus, Jamaica Kincaid’s work argues that traditional gender roles are learned because at a young age children are taught how to act masculine and feminine. According to Carol Baileys article on Performance and the Gendered Body in Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Girl’ “The poem is a fictional representation of the double-edged tendencies which involve child-rearing practices in many Caribbean societies: as the mother provides guidelines for living, the moments of care are constantly weakened by the severity evident in what the mother is actually saying and the fact that her daughter is lectured with little room for discussion” (Carol Bailey 106). The instructions in the poem “Girl” reveal an effective performance of gender roles assigned to women in the Caribbean societies, which shows significant acts in domestic, social, and other spheres.
In “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, Kincaid criticizes tourists for being heartless and ignorant to the problems that the people of Antigua had and the sacrifices that had to be made to make Antigua a tremendous tourist/vacation spot. While Kincaid makes a strong argument, her argument suggests that she doesn't realize what tourism is for the tourists. In other words, tourism is an escape for those who are going on vacation and the tourists are well within their rights to be “ignorant”, especially because no one is telling them what is wrong with Antigua.
Jamaica Kincaid’s success as a writer was not easily attained as she endured struggles of having to often sleep on the floor of her apartment because she could not afford to buy a bed. She described herself as being a struggling writer, who did not know how to write, but sheer determination and a fortunate encounter with the editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn who set the epitome for her writing success. Ms. Kincaid was a West-Indian American writer who was the first writer and the first individual from her island of Antigua to achieve this goal. Her genre of work includes novelists, essayist, and a gardener. Her writing style has been described as having dreamlike repetition, emotional truth and autobiographical underpinnings (Tahree, 2013). Oftentimes her work have been criticized for its anger and simplicity and praised for its keen observation of character, wit and lyrical quality. But according to Ms. Kincaid her writing, which are mostly autobiographical, was an act of saving her life by being able to express herself in words. She used her life experiences and placed them on paper as a way to make sense of her past. Her experience of growing up in a strict single-parent West-Indian home was the motivation for many of her writings. The knowledge we garnered at an early age influenced the choice we make throughout our life and this is no more evident than in the writings of Jamaica Kincaid.
Black women's experiences and those of other women of color have never fit the private -public model. Rather than trying to explain why Black women's work and family patterns deviate from the alleged norm, a more fruitful approach lies in challenging the very constructs of work and families themselves. ("Native")
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a tourist so many times before and yet, I had never stopped to consider what happens behind the surface of the countries I visit until I read this essay. Kincaid aims to provoke her readers; her style of writing supports her goal and sets both her and her essay apart. To the reader, it sounds like Kincaid is attacking the beautiful island, pin-pointing the very things that we, as tourists, wish to ignore. No tourist wants to think about faeces from the several tourists in the hotel swimming alongside them in the oceans, nor do they want to think about having accidents and having to deal with the hospital. It seems so natural that a tourist would not consider these, and that is exactly what Kincaid has a problem with.
“Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield tells a story of a lonely, English lady in France. Miss Brill is a quiet person who believes herself to be important. The whole afternoon at the gardens, Miss Brill does not converse with anyone, nor does anyone show any inclination to talk with her. She merely watches others and listens to their conversations. This provides her with a sense of companionship; she feels as if she is a part of other people’s lives. Miss Brill is also slightly self-conceited. She believes that she is so important that people would notice if she ever missed a Sunday at the park. It does not occur to her that other people may not want her to be there.