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Jamaica Kincaid
Diane Simmons. New York: Twayne, 1994. 155 pp.
Valerie Lee
Diane Simmons begins her study with several matter-of-fact, unequivocal statements asserting that Kincaid's work is not about "the charm of a Caribbean childhood," colonialism, or American racism. Rather, Simmons posits, "Kincaid's work is about loss, an all but unbearable fall from a paradise remembered . . ." (1). However, to proceed with any sustained discussion of Kincaid, Simmons must discuss and does discuss all the opening ideas that she earlier dismisses. Entitled "A Paradise Lost," chapter one explores several lost paradises, maternal and imperial ones. It is the rubric of lost paradises that necessitates a discussion on childhood, colonialism, and racism. Ironically, Simmons's opening statements and argument fall prey to the very technique she uses to describe Kincaid's work: it is "so frequently its own contradiction" (5), an allusion to Walcott's remark describing a Kincaid sentence.
Most useful about chapter one is Simmons's development of the liberatory transformation of Elaine Potter Richardson into Jamaica Kincaid. Using the framing of Jane Eyre, Simmons chronicles Kincaid's life. Both Eyre's and Kincaid's lives "trace the unlikely trajectory from servitude and obscurity to prominence and power" (10). Also interesting is the discussion of power and race which follows, prompted by Kincaid's 1976 review for Village Voice of a Diana Ross concert. As we look back on that review some twenty years later, Kincaid seems almost...