SOURCE: “The Rhythm of Reality in the Works of Jamaica Kincaid,” in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 3, Summer, 1994, pp. 466–72.

In the following essay, Simmons discusses the recurring themes of loss and betrayal in Kincaid's fiction, specifically addressing the author's use of repetitive language and litanies in her prose to underscore contradictions and to effect closure.

At heart Jamaica Kincaid's work is not about the charm of a Caribbean childhood, though her first and best-known novel, Annie John (1983), may leave this impression. Nor is it about colonialism, though her angry, book-length essay, A Small Place (1988), accuses the reader of continuing the exploitation begun by Columbus. Nor, finally, is Kincaid's work about black and white in America, though her second novel, Lucy (1990), runs a rich white urban family through the shredder of a young black au pair's rage.

At heart Kincaid's work is about loss, an all but unbearable fall...