 |  Kincaid's work:
Annie John
Kincaid's work is strongly autobiographical. In her first novel, Annie John, published in 1985, she describes the childhood of Annie John and her relationship with her mother as she grows up on the island of Antigua. Annie John's experiences are a mirror of Kincaid's as a girl. Annie describes what she considers as a moment of betrayal by her mother with the shock of her first menstruation. She describes her mother as a serpent - an image of betrayal...
 I started to menstruate...
Lucy
This feeling of betrayal echoes Kincaid's experiences at this time when her mother seemed to give more importance to her sons and their futures, and to ignore the possibility that Kincaid herself had any chance of equalling their success, despite being a very good student... Kincaid describes this experience in her second novel Lucy. Lucy has left her family to be an au pair, a kind of domestic servant, to a New York family. Again the events described are strongly linked to events in Kincaid's own life.
My father did not know me...
publication details
Annie John (1985), Vintage
Lucy (1991), Plume Contemporary Fiction
My Garden Book (1999), Harper Collins
| |
|   | | life events | | | | key influences and themes | |  | | Kincaid's work | | | | style | | | | the next chapter | | | | being a woman writer | | | | Women Writers | | | | Ama Ata Aidoo | | | | Meena Alexander | | | | Maya Angelou | | | | Shashi Deshpande | | | | Margaret Drabble | | | | Buchi Emecheta | | | | Doris Lessing | | | | Bharati Mukherjee | | | | Michele Roberts | | | | Helen Simpson | |
|
