Point of View

Lucy is written from the first-person point of view. The speaker is Lucy Josephine Potter, a nineteen-year-old émigré from the West Indies in the Caribbean. The reader enters only into Lucy's thoughts, and the entire book is comprised of Lucy's thoughts, observations, recollections and experiences. The point of the view of the author is first that of an émigré. Lucy's home in the West Indies was a small island, eight miles long and twelve miles wide. By the time she left, she had not even traveled to three-quarters of it. Her perspective is that of a young, dark-skinned girl growing up in the climate of post-colonial British rule. She did not like British people, instead preferring to be ruled by the French.

When she reaches the United States, she feels insignificant. Everyone knows she is an immigrant, but no one knows where she is from, mixing...