Although the latter part of her literary education took place in the United States, it is the subject of British colonialism to which she returns again and again in her writings.
Jamaica Kincaid was born on 25 May 1949 at Holberton Hospital in St. John's, Antigua, and named Elaine Potter Richardson by her mother. Richardson was the surname of her mother, Annie, who immigrated to Antigua from Dominica and whom Kincaid names in a 1992 interview with Kay Bonetti as the person she writes for: "my great audience is this one-half Carib Indian woman living in Antigua." Kincaid's biological father, Roderick Potter, did not play a significant role in her childhood. Soon after the birth of her daughter, Annie Richardson married David Drew, a carpenter and cabinetmaker whom Kincaid uses as the model for her fictional fathers. She considers Drew her father and says of him that he could see a piece of furniture and copy it from sight. Annie and David Drew had three sons, Joseph in 1958, Dalma in 1959, and Devon in 1961. Kincaid dedicated her fourth book, A Small Place (1988), partly to her three brothers.
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