In her study at home in North Bennington, 2018. Interview still frame courtesy of Stephanie Black.
牙买加·金凯德(Jamaica Kincaid)于1949年出生于安提瓜(Antigua)的伊莱恩·波特·理查森(Elaine Potter Richardson)。她十六岁时,她的家人打断了她的教育,使她在纽约担任保姆。随着时间的流逝,她将自己置于另一条道路上。她从曼哈顿的新学校转到新罕布什尔州的弗朗西尼亚学院,并在《玛格南照片》和《青少年》杂志上工作Ingenue。在70年代中期,她开始写信乡村声音,但它在The纽约人她成了一个常规的专栏作家,谈到镇上的谈话,一切都改变了她。她的早期小说,其中许多杂志也出现在那里,被收集在At the Bottom of the River(1983年),一本书,就像她的谈话故事一样,宣布她的主题,她的风格,她的散文的不可思议的纯洁。她发表了小说安妮约翰(1985),Lucy(1990),我母亲的自传(1996),Mr. Potter(2002), and现在看(2013). A children’s book,Annie, Gwen, Lilly, Pam and Tulip,1986年出来。除了收集谈话故事(2001), her nonfiction works include一个小地方(1988), a reckoning with the colonial legacy on Antigua;My Brother(1997), a memoir of the tragedy ofAIDSin her family; and two books on gardening,我的花园(书)(1999)和Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya(2005)。
Kincaid divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is a professor of African American studies at Harvard University, and Bennington, Vermont, where her large brown clapboard house with yellow window trim is shielded by trees. She has two children from her marriage to the composer Allen Shawn, the son of the former纽约人editor William Shawn, and in the living room she displays on a table—proudly, apologetically—productions from the arts-and-crafts camps and classes that her son and daughter attended over the years. The study where she writes is a sunroom surrounded on three sides by windows. The terrace that starts at the back door ends in a border of stones; the lawn, planted with thousands of daffodils, slopes down to a thickly shaded creek. Nearby are a vegetable garden caged against wildlife and a cottage in which lives Trevor, her bearded young assistant. Over some twenty years, Kincaid has made what my partner, the poet James Fenton, calls a “plantsman’s garden,” full of rare species. Her hundreds of plants are layered into a composition of informal design, expressive of her refined aesthetic and untroubled eccentricity. She has plants that move her because of how they look or how they behave, or because of their histories.
This conversation began at a public event at the 92nd Street Y in 2013, and was picked up again in her Vermont kitchen eight years later, in the summer of 2021, when the social restrictions of the pandemic had, for a time, eased. Jamaica Kincaid is a generous host. She cooks with flair. Her big, broad-frame glasses evoke the Italian movie stars of the sixties. The years have gone by, but she is still tall. Her voice is as musical as ever, high-pitched, the Anglo-Caribbean lilt beguiling. She is a presence; everything begins to happen when she talks. In person and on the page, Kincaid’s is a literary voice. She is alive to the advantage in the irony that her literary heritage had not predicted her, exalted, brave, free.
面试官
Why did your family send you to America? Wasn’t London still a capital of empire in the mid-’60s, the cultural center of the Commonwealth?
JAMAICA KINCAID
如果他们在伦敦认识任何人,他们会把我送到那里。但是他们没有任何长期计划。这个想法不是我会建立自己,然后让我的家人加入我。我只是被派去支持他们。我的父亲 - 我的继父 - 生病了,父母有三个孩子。我最小的兄弟的到来使我们陷入了一种我们从未知道的贫困。它曾经是您牺牲大孩子的农业家庭中的传统。我记得被送走的黑暗 - 当时对我不知道的一种痛苦。直到那时,我只从书中知道的是想家。我想我第一次在勃朗特人中遇到了它。
面试官
So there wasn’t any excitement in it?
KINCAID
根本不是,因为我要去仆人。我记得在炎热的阳光下走到安提瓜的美国基地之一,当我们称为疯子庇护所和死房子时,pas着疯狂的房子,在那里死去的人的尸体被放在医院里,直到被他们收集到被他们收集到。the undertaker—to be interviewed by an American soldier’s wife. I was very bitter about it because I had before me what seemed to be a successful future. I might have gone to the University of the West Indies. I would have gotten a scholarship. It seemed cruel even to other people because I was known as what we called a “bright child.” No, there wasn’t any cause for celebration, though my mother did make me a new dress and see me off to the airport.
面试官
Homesickness—this kind of interrupted love—is a big element in your work.
KINCAID
好吧,也许,但是即使我很小,我也从来没有真正觉得自己属于安提瓜。我的母亲来自多米尼加,那些小岛的事情是,一个岛上或另一个小岛的人彼此不喜欢。她是安提瓜的局外人,看上去与众不同。她是加勒比印第安人的一部分,他们曾经称她为红色女人。
我想我的工作总是在哀悼某事,失去天堂 - 不是死后的事情,而是您以前的事物。我经常想到我兄弟出生的时间 - 这听起来很幼稚,但我不在乎 - 我和我母亲一直在一起的这个天堂。有时候,我和我的母亲会去游泳,她会消失一秒钟,我想象的深度只是滚过来,她会越来越深,我再也不会见到她了。 . . And then she would pop up somewhere else. Those memories are a constant source of some strange pleasure for me.
I was pulled out of school to take care of my youngest brother while my mother went to work, and when she realized I hadn’t been looking after him properly, that I had been reading instead, she gathered all the books I had stolen from the library over the years and burned them. You can probably tell from my writing that I’m obsessed with notions of justice and injustice—those things that are wrong that can never be made right.
如今,如果我要想家,那将是佛蒙特州的,这很奇怪。但是也许这是有道理的 - 我每天都在看到大海的地方长大,在我生命的尽头,我住在一个水耗尽的地方。
面试官
DidLucy出现一种感觉,您需要以某种方式将到达美国的到达 - 检查或抛弃它?
KINCAID
并不是要把任何东西都放在我身上,以说明发生了什么事。Lucy是关于一个人的成就。您可以在其中看到Jane Eyre。我在世界上独自一人的感觉,我有诚信。您可能想要这个,但我会这样做。露西停止将她的薪水送回家,而我确实停止了送我的薪水。我仍然有我在Bonwit Teller买的衣服。我是你见过的最好的保姆。
面试官
Were you refashioning yourself?
KINCAID
我喜欢打扮和外出。您可能会说那是我母亲的影响。当我最小的哥哥出生时,她的生活已经崩溃了,但是我小时候她是一个非常优雅的女人。我曾经很ham愧与她见面,因为她是如此性感 - 各个年龄段的人都会阻止她并与她交谈。我记得她在法国卷中穿着头发,她穿着他们所谓的霍布尔裙子。
After I moved to New York, I modeled for people like Steven Meisel. I clearly had one of those eating problems, but I didn’t know what they were. I didn’t know that there was anything about me that had a name, that could be diagnosed. I ended up smoking Lucky Strikes, just because I liked the way it looked, the gesture. For some reason, I decided to cut off my hair and bleach it blond. I dressed in old clothes, thrift-shop clothes.
我风格看上去没有其他人。而且我也知道我不想像其他任何人一样写作。当我开始写谈话时The纽约人,我试图摆脱他们使用的匿名“我们”。他们有很好的作家,但他们是这些古老的粗壮的白人。我讨厌我们。我对某种写作如此蔑视,现在我称之为“白色写作”。它是如此沉闷和举止。