Strohmer has taught English at the University of Michigan and works as a freelance writer. In the following essay, she examines Kincaid's "What I Have Been Doing Lately" and contends that it is "a story about the power of storytelling to reveal truth."

Generalizing about Caribbean authors, Daryl Cumber Dance notes, "Language and identity are inseparable. The quest for identity is [a] prevalent concern in Caribbean literature." Perhaps because of this connection, many readers tend to examine Jamaica Kincaid's stories as semi-autobiographical texts. In the scholarly journals in which literary critics publish their work, articles on Kincaid are sometimes interviews rather than interpretations of her work; even in interpretive articles, Kincaid's biography becomes a reference point.

For example, in Moira Ferguson's book Jamaica Kincaid: Where the Land Meets the Body, Ferguson frequently refers to the facts of Kincaid's life to substantiate her arguments about Kincaid's stories. When...