Jamaica Kincaid

Xuela Claudette Richardson menettää karibialaisen äitinsä syntymässään ja joutuu siitä lähtien selviämään omin neuvoin. Xuela pelkää ja vieroksuu arvaamatonta afrikkalais-skottilaista isäänsä, joka ei osaa huolehtia vauvasta ja jättää tämän pitkäksi aikaa pyykkärinaisen hoiviin.Aikuisena Xuela solmii avioliiton englantilaisen lääkärin kanssa mutta rakastuu Rolandiin, ahtaajaan, joka varastaa hänelle irlantilaista pellavaa valtamerilaivoilta.Xuelan maailma on fyysinen, ylikypsiltä hedelmiltä, rikiltä ja sateen kastelemalta maalta tuoksuva, surumielinen ja yksinäinen maailma, jonka ytimessä on äidittömyys.Kincaidin edellisissä romaaneissa Annie John ja Lucy esiintyneen kaltainen äitihahmo nähtiin aiemmin tyttären alisteisesta ja kapinoivasta näkökulmasta. Nyt äiti kertoo oman totuutensa - mutta kuka kertoja on? Ravisuttavan raaka ja vaikuttava, lyyrisen kauniisti ja aistivoimaisesti kerrottu kasvutarina sijoittuu karibialaiselle Dominican saarelle.

A portrait of an indelible young woman, Kincaid's second novel is "vivid, true and necessary" (Los Angeles Times).Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah and their four children. Lewis and Mariah are a thrice-blessed couple--handsome, rich, and seemingly happy. Yet, almost at once, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful facade. With mingled anger and compassion, Lucy scrutinizes the assumptions and verities of her employers' world and compares them with the vivid realities of her native place. Lucy has no illusions about her own past, but neither is she prepared to be deceived about where she presently is. At the same time that Lucy is coming to terms with the way the family lives, she is also unraveling the mysteries of her own sexuality. Gradually a new person unfolds: passionate, forthright, and disarmingly honest. In Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid has created a startling new character possessed of adamantine clear-sightedness and ferocious integrity--a captivating heroine for our time.

The coming-of-age story of one of Jamaica Kincaid's most admired creations--newly available in paperback Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah and their four children. Lewis and Mariah are a thrice-blessed couple--handsome, rich, and seemingly happy. Yet, almost at once, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful facade. With mingled anger and compassion, Lucy scrutinizes the assumptions and verities of her employers' world and compares them with the vivid realities of her native place. Lucy has no illusions about her own past, but neither is she prepared to be deceived about where she presently is. At the same time that Lucy is coming to terms with Lewis's and Mariah's lives, she is also unravelling the mysteries of her own sexuality. Gradually a new person unfolds: passionate, forthright, and disarmingly honest. In Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid has created a startling new character possessed with adamantine clearsightedness and ferocious integrity--a captivating heroine for our time.

A classic coming-of-age story from Jamaica Kincaid, following a young woman as she enters adulthood against the backdrop of a strange and unfamiliar country.

A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua, by the author of Annie John.Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright, A Small Place magnifies our vision of one small place with Swiftian wit and precision. Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay candidly appraises the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up, Antigua, and makes palpable the impact of European colonialism and tourism. This book is a missive to the traveler, whether American or European, who wants to escape the banality and corruption of some large place. Kincaid, powerful and resolute, reminds us that the Antiguan people, formerly British subjects, are unable to escape the same drawbacks of their own tiny realm--that behind the benevolent Caribbean scenery are human lives, always complex and often fraught with injustice.

This piercing examination of the manifold ways in which the passing of time operates on the human consciousness unfolds gracefully, and Kincaid inhabits each of her characters - a mother, a father, and their two children, living in a small village in New England - as they move, in their own minds, between the present, the past, and the future: for, as she writes, “the present will be now then and the past is now then and the future will be a now then.” Her characters, constrained by the world, despair in their domestic situations. But their minds wander, trying to make linear sense of what is, in fact, nonlinear. See Now Then is Kincaid’s attempt to make clear what is unclear, and to make unclear what we assumed was clear: that is, the beginning, the middle, and the end. Over the past forty years of her career, Kincaid has demonstrated a unique talent for seeing beyond and through the surface of things. In See Now Then, she envelops the reader in a world that is both familiar and startling - creating her most emotionally and thematically daring work yet.

The essential, urgent coming-of-age novel by Jamaica Kincaid, a reinventor of the form.Since her first, prizewinning collection of stories, At the Bottom of the River, Jamaica Kincaid's work has been met with nothing short of amazement. The New York Times hailed her "prophetic power" and the Los Angeles Times Book Review said, "No one else seems to be writing quite this way." With Annie John, the story of a young girl coming of age in Antigua, Kincaid tore open the theme that lies at the heart of her fierce, incantatory novels: the ambivalent and essential bonds created by a mother's love. In this book, written in Kincaid's lucid, elemental style, Annie John's ambivalence is universally familiar and wrenchingly real.

‘If revenge is a dish best served cold, See Now Then is a baked alaska in reverse, chilling on the outside, screaming hot at the center’ - New York TimesMr and Mrs Sweet live in a house in the small town of Bennington, New England. While Mr Sweet grew up in the dining rooms of the Plaza Hotel and in the audience of the city ballet, Mrs Sweet arrived in the United States on a banana boat, sailing from Dominica.A blazing, unflinching portrait of a couple trying to make sense of the relationship they’ve settled for, See Now Then is the first novel in a decade from Jamaica Kincaid, one of today’s most celebrated writers.Now in the Picador Collection.

‘Controlled and fearless perfection’ - The Washington PostJamaica Kincaid’s brother Devon died of Aids on 19 January 1996 at the age of 33. This poetic and shockingly candid recounting of her brother’s life and death is also the story of her family in Antigua - centred round her destructive mother - and a portrait of an illness misunderstood.From one of today’s most iconic writers, My Brother is a remarkable record of a life that ended too early. It speaks to the difficult truths at the heart of all families.Now in the Picador Collection.

‘Fresh, risky, improvisational and hard-to-categorize writing’ - Chicago TribuneTalk Stories is a collection of Jamaica Kincaid’s original writing for the New Yorker’s ‘Talk of the Town’ column from 1974 to 1983. In these early pieces Kincaid discovers New York’s many hidden secrets as she learns the worlds of publishing and partying, of fashion and popular music, and how to call a cauliflower a crudité.

I form av små utsnitt ur hela, långa och komplexa liv berättar novellerna i denna ask historier om något mycket större: Hur det är att vara ett litet barn och avguda sin mor, hur det är att vara förälder med ett omedelbart behov av att beskydda, hur det är att vara i en relation och behöva välja mellan sin egen rädsla och sin partners begär, och hur det är att vara i ett äktenskap som dränker och förtär ens existens, bit för bit. Tills den dag man får nog. I Arvsled och avgöranden ger fyra älskade och kritikerrosade författare exempel på hur den man har allra närmast ibland kan vara den man står allra längst ifrån, och om hur det är att söka kraft hos andra - men finna den hos sig själv. Asken innehåller fyra böcker: Märta Tikkanen - Det finns en skräck på bottnenAnnika Norlin - Arvsled Jamaica Kincaid - Biografi över en klänning Karin Smirnoff - Missing People

The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected--and most popular--of its kind. The Best American Travel Writing 2005 includes William Least-Heat Moon - Ian Frazier - John McPhee - William T. Vollmann - Simon Winchester - Tom Bissell - Madison Smartt Bell - Timothy Bascom - Pam Houston - and others Jamaica Kincaid, guest editor, is the author of numerous award-winning works, including the memoirs My Brother and The Autobiography of My Mother and the novel Annie John. Her travelogue Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalayas appeared in 2005. She lives in Vermont with her two children and a garden, in which she travels a great deal.

A landmark collection of work by the iconic writer Jamaica Kincaid. ‘An unaffectedly sumptuous, irresistible writer’ Susan Sontag ‘What a writer’ Ali Smith ‘Both a daughter of Brontë and Woolf and her own inimitable self’ The Wall Street Journal ‘If you are new to Kincaid, I envy you’ Jackie Kay That’s the way I write. It’s never going to stop. And the more it makes people annoyed the more I will do it. Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson in Antigua in 1949. She has always been herself. Her work began to be published after she moved to New York at the age of nineteen, and by 1974 she was contributing to the New Yorker’s ‘Talk of the Town’ column, where she later became a staff writer. This is a blazing collection that spans more than five decades of Jamaica Kincaid’s writing. From Muhammad Ali, Diana Ross, gardening and motherhood to colonialism and the act of writing, Putting Myself Together shows how this witty and fearless writer became one of the most remarkable and influential voices of a generation.

My ignorance was on my side. I wasn't afraid. I didn't know what to be afraid of. I did one thing, I did another. I did what I now call crashing about. One day I started to write. This collection of Jamaica Kincaid's nonfiction writing, including early pieces from publications such as The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and Ms., proves what her admirers have always known: from the start, she has been a consummate stylist, and she has always been herself. From "Jamaica Kincaid's New York," which narrates her move to the city from Antigua at the age of sixteen and a half, to the classic "Biography of a Dress," her cultural criticism, and her original thinking about the meaning of the garden, Kincaid writes about the world as she finds it, imparting her own quizzical, rapier-sharp response to whatever crosses her path. Putting Myself Together is a brilliant, trenchant, hilarious self-portrait of the artist and a testament to how this inimitable, self-created mind and spirit, endowed with wit, humor, and fearlessness, has become one of our greatest, most original writers.

A landmark collection of essays by the iconic writer Jamaica Kincaid.‘An unaffectedly sumptuous, irresistible writer’ - Susan Sontag‘What a writer' - Ali Smith‘Both a daughter of Brontë and Woolf and her own inimitable self’ The Wall Street Journal'If you are new to Kincaid, I envy you’ - Jackie KayThat’s the way I write. It’s never going to stop. And the more it makes people annoyed the more I will do it. Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson in Antigua in 1949. She has always been herself. Her work began to be published after she moved to New York at the age of nineteen, and by 1974 she was contributing to The New Yorker’s ‘Talk of the Town’ column, where she later became a staff writer.This is is a blazing collection that spans more than five decades of Jamaica Kincaid’s writing. From Muhammad Ali, Diana Ross, gardening and motherhood, to colonialism and the act of writing, Putting Myself Together shows how this witty and fearless writer became one of the most remarkable and influential voices of a generation.

My ignorance was on my side. I wasn't afraid. I didn't know what to be afraid of. I did one thing, I did another. I did what I now call crashing about. One day I started to write. This collection of Jamaica Kincaid's nonfiction writing, including early pieces from publications such as The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and Ms., proves what her admirers have always known: from the start, she has been a consummate stylist, and she has always been herself. From "Jamaica Kincaid's New York," which narrates her move to the city from Antigua at the age of sixteen and a half, to the classic "Biography of a Dress," her cultural criticism, and her original thinking about the meaning of the garden, Kincaid writes about the world as she finds it, imparting her own quizzical, rapier-sharp response to whatever crosses her path. Putting Myself Together is a brilliant, trenchant, hilarious self-portrait of the artist and a testament to how this inimitable, self-created mind and spirit, endowed with wit, humor, and fearlessness, has become one of our greatest, most original writers.

Jamaica Kincaids första trädgård bestod av en liten plätt i gräsmattan framför familjens hus i Vermont. Hon hade fått ett par fröpåsar och några trädgårdsredskap i morsdagspresent, av en familj som inte kunde ana att de satt igång ett intresse som snart skulle överskugga allt annat. På platsen där hon föddes, den karibiska ön Antigua, anlade man inte trädgårdar för njutningens skull. Där var växtligheten antingen vild eller förknippad med arbete, en påminnelse om slaveriet. Men så har Kincaid inte heller anlagt sina trädgårdar som andra. För henne är trädgården tätt förknippad med historien och hennes sätt att se på världen: hon intresserar sig för växternas ursprung och ser likheter mellan hur människor och växter flyttats från platser där de hör hemma och fått nya namn. Att namnge är att äga, menar Kincaid, och ger oss ett bland annat ett nytt perspektiv på Carl von Linnés gärning. Jamaica Kincaids trädgårdsbok är till lika delar essä, memoar och en entusiastisk odlares anteckningar. Med ett vindlande vackert språk som känns igen från hennes romaner berättar hon om sina passioner och sina misslyckanden, hon läser frökataloger och biografier över trädgårdsmästare, hon besöker Monets trädgård och Chelsea Flower Show, och hon åker till Kina för att samla fröer och genom hela boken sätter hon själva idén om trädgården i ett större perspektiv. JAMAICA KINCAID (f. 1949) är författare till romaner som Lucy, Min mors självbiografi och Annie John. Hon föddes på Antigua men har bott i USA sedan tonåren och lämnar ogärna trädgården i Vermont i nordöstra USA under somrarna. Under många år var hon skribent på den legendariska tidskriften New Yorker, där också hennes trädgårdsskrivande inleddes. NICLAS NILSSON är en av Sveriges mest ansedda översättare från engelska. Han har tidigare översatt flera av Kincaids romaner, men även författare som George Saunders, Colson Whitehead, Richard Ford, Zadie Smith, Madeline Miller och Anne Sexton.

From the recipient of the 2010 Clifton Fadiman Medal, an unforgettable novel of one woman's courageous coming-of-age Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother is a story of love, fear, loss, and the forging of character, an account of one woman's inexorable evolution, evoked in startling and magical prose. This novel tells the deeply charged story of a woman's life on the island of Dominica. Xuela Claudette Richardson, the daughter of a Carib mother and a half-Scottish, half-African father, loses her mother to death the moment she is born and must find her way on her own. Kincaid takes us from Xuela's childhood in a home where she can hear the song of the sea to the tin-roofed room where she lives as a schoolgirl in the house of Jack LaBatte, who becomes her first lover. Xuela develops a passion for the stevedore Roland, who steals bolts of Irish linen for her from the ships he unloads, but she eventually marries an English doctor, Philip Bailey. Xuela's is an intensely physical world, redolent of overripe fruit, gentian violet, sulfur, and rain on the road, and it seethes with her sorrow, her fear of her father, her desperate loneliness, and her deep sympathy for those who share her history. But underlying all is "the black room of the world" that is Xuela's motherlessness and barrenness.

Annie John er en fortelling om en ung jentes oppvekst på den karibiske øya Antigua. Det er egentlig en klassisk oppvekstroman som viser frem den universelle erfaringen og både det tragiske og ofte komiske, i overgangen fra barn til voksen.Som eneste elsket datter har Annie inntil nylig levd et idyllisk liv. Hun er uadskillelig fra sin vakre mor, som med sitt sterke nærvær er selve midtpunktet i den lille jentas liv. Elsket og verdsatt vokser Annie og blomstrer i skyggen av sin mors godhet. Når hun ser tilbake på barndommen, reflekterer hun: «I dette paradiset var det jeg levde.» Men da hun fyller tolv år, endres Annies liv på måter som ofte forblir mystiske for henne selv. Hun begynner å stille spørsmål ved de kulturelle forutsetningene i sin øyverden, på skolen gjør hun instinktivt opprør mot autoriteter, og det skremmende er at moren, som nå ser på Annie som en «ung dame», slutter å være kilde til ubetinget kjærlighet og tar på seg den nye og ukjente rollen som motstander. Ved slutten av skolegangen bestemmer Annie seg for å forlate Antigua og familien sin, men ikke uten en viss sorg, spesielt for moren hun en gang kjente og aldri slutter å sørge over.