Biography Essay

"As I go on writing, I feel less and less interested in the approval of the First World, and I never had the approval of the world I came from, so now I don't know where I am. I've exiled myself yet again," pronounced Jamaica Kincaid in a 1990 interview with Donna Perry. Despite having produced only six slim volumes of prose-four of which include most of her already published short writings —Kincaid has already earned a reputation as a writer of distinction and is certainly one of the best known and most respected women writers from the Caribbean. There has been a virtual explosion of interest in her work in the mid 1990s, with most critical articles having been published since 1990. Kincaid's success is related to two factors that distinguish her from other contemporary writers: her rise to prominence from within the orbit of that elite...