SOURCE: “Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy: Cultural ‘Translation’ as a Case of Creative Exploration of the Past,” in MELUS, Vol. 21, No. 3, Fall, 1996, pp. 141–57.

In the following essay, Oczkowicz examines the process by which the protagonist of Lucy attempts to forge an independent self-identity that reconciles her past experiences in post-colonial Antigua and present realities in America.

In her potent essay “On Seeing England for the First Time,” Jamaica Kincaid writes: “The space between the idea of something and its reality is always wide and deep and dark” (37). Her reflection delineates the “space” of complex post-colonial experience which has captured and shaped the lives of many peoples colonized since Christopher Columbus's first conquests. Born on Antigua, a former British colony, Kincaid, as both a writer and an individual, struggles with her legacy of post-colonialism. A Small Place (1988) is her insightful critical analysis of political, historical, and cultural aspects of the post-colonial...