Fact: Jamaica Kincaid
Born: 1949 in Antigua
Lives: Vermont, USA.
Background: Jamaica Kincaid began her career writing articles for Ingenue Magazine and later The New Yorker. She debuted with the collection of short stories “At the Bottom of the River” in 1984. Other famous novels are “Annie John”, “Lucy”, “My mother’s autobiography” and the essay “A small place”, as well as “Mr Potter” and “See Now Then”. She has also written “(The book about) my garden”.
Jamaica Kincaid is Professor of African and American Studies at Harvard.
Jamaica Kincaid often says that she got the language from her mother, who taught her to read already at the age of 2.5-3.5. In the author’s latest book “Among flowers” it turns out that her great passion for the garden also comes from her mother. In childhood, she used to observe her mother planting a soursop tree one moment, only to burn it down the next in a rage when ants built a nest inside and found their way into the house.
— I don’t think she thought of herself as a gardener, she was just very busy with the plant world. She came from a family in Dominica who owned land, where they grew bananas, coffee and citrus fruits. So she often worked planting things as a child, says Jamaica Kincaid, who agrees that she “seems to have inherited” the love of gardening and growing from her mother.
— But I spread the interest to many areas: I can see the whole world through the garden, says the Nobel Prize-winning author on a visit to Sweden, where she has just attracted thousands of readers during her performances.
Examining himself
In “Among Flowers” Jamaica Kincaid embarks on an arduous journey to one of the areas from which the Western world imports its flowers, the Himalayas. When she sees plants, she often asks herself “how did it get here?” – and the answer leads her on endless, winding knitting trails, both in the books and when she talks.
— It has opened incredible historical depths. For example, how did the tulip come to Europe? Apparently, it was a diplomat in Turkey who carried a red flower and smuggled it in his bag, to Holland where it then led to “tulip mania” and the destruction of the entire Dutch economy, she says, but stresses that every single tulip bulb in Holland comes to someone from elsewhere.
— Much of what the Europeans have belongs to people they don’t like. How many of the Dutch want the Turks to enter the EU? But they have their tulips.
In the essay “A small place” she sharply criticized the Western tourism that followed in the footsteps of the colonizers and now she turns the same gaze on herself. Here she is no longer the poor girl from Antigua, but a privileged person who travels for pleasure.
TT: It is a new perspective in your books, that you are the privileged one.
— Yes, and I was incredibly aware of it. It’s stupid and superficial maybe but I made the decision not to describe people’s appearance. Because that was one of the first things Columbus did in his journal. He notes people’s physiques and finds them useful. And I didn’t want to do that.
“I became more and more curious the more I got into horticulture. It gave me so much more than knowledge about the garden, like many new interpretations of what the creation story means,” says Jamaica Kincaid.Connecting with the Earth
Jamaica Kincaid began thinking about the division between utility and pleasure after reading the Bible’s creation account of the first garden of all, Eden. In it there is the Tree of Life, which symbolizes agriculture, and the Tree of Knowledge, which symbolizes horticulture (gardening) – and which is above all for the rich.
— Cultivating a plant just for its beauty is something that many of us in the colonized world have lost. In the little time you have, you grow things that you can eat.
Jamaica Kincaid has described in “Lucy” how at the age of 16 she was sent alone from her home in Antigua to the United States to become a nanny and help the family financially. There she encountered racism for the first time. In “Se Nu Då” she describes a relationship between an uptight composer and a woman who “came with the banana boat”. And despite the fact that she has a privileged position in the Himalayas, Kincaid emphasizes that she and other blacks are always primarily associated with agriculture.
— Because of slavery, Africans in the New World or in the diaspora were so tied to the land. So you’re often looked down upon if you’re dirty and your nails are.. well look, my nails still have traces of dirt on them, says Jamaica Kincaid, holding out her hand.
She has struggled hard to write a self, contrary to generalizations in the wounds of colonialism. She believes Europeans understand that aspiration.
— Not far from here, a struggle is going on where people are trying to be free from a dominance that blurs the self. Every individual has the right to their self, she says and exclaims:
— You see — we’re talking about the garden and suddenly I’m in Ukraine. God – help me!
Devoted mother
The long, risky journey that Kincaid made also had a price. She had just divorced and left her son at home with a paid babysitter. And although rebellion and separation between children and parents – as well as between colonizers and the colonized – is a recurring theme in her literature, she did not go into the theme more deeply in the book. Now she says it’s worth thinking about more.
— I’m actually a very devoted mother, a wonderful mother, even if my children don’t always think so. But the fact is, when the moment came, I sacrificed something. And it wasn’t about the career, because who is interested in a woman who collects seeds? It was my drive to find out something, she says, but points out that male adventurers are not held accountable for such choices.
With her usual brutal honesty, she fills in:
— I made a reckless decision, just because of my own curiosity.
“When I was little, my parents often talked to me and I listened. I think they thought I wasn’t listening, and I know they didn’t think I would write down what they said, because then they would never have talked to me.” , says Jamaica Kincaid.