Jamaica Kincaid

What draws me to Jamaica Kincaid is the sheer distance she traveled, from St. John's in tiny Antigua and Barbuda to the faculty at Harvard, carried entirely by the force of her prose. She writes about colonialism and the mother-daughter wound with a clarity that refuses to flinch, and the Guggenheim, the Prix Femina and the Dan David Prize all bear that out. But the detail I love most is her later life as a gardener in Vermont, turning even her flowerbeds into essays. For Kincaid, writing and living seem inseparable. Annie John and Lucy are books I keep meaning to sit with properly.

Name (English)

Jamaica Kincaid

Name (Japanese)

ジャメイカ・キンケイド

Reading

じゃめいか・きんけいど

Born

May 25, 1949 (age 77)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Gemini / Ox

Origin

St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda

Occupation

writer / novelist / playwright / university teacher / essayist

University

Franconia College

Awards & achievements

• 1985 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2000 Prix Femina étranger
• 2017 Dan David Prize
• 2014 American Book Awards
• 1997 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
• honorary doctor of Brandeis University
• 2004 Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AD%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%89

Tags

• writer
• novelist
• playwright

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.