Jamica Kincaid

What I Am Writing:

Portraying The Life Through the Works

Every person has had a significant moment in their life in which they can state is the reason for a change in the way they’re living: a moment that has influenced the person greatly in many different aspects of life. If it wasn’t for “this” there would be no “that” type of significant life experience. Many of the occurrences we experience in our lifetime often seem minute in significance, but may become very relevant at a later date. We rarely can predict how a situation will affect and shape our lives until after it occurs and takes its place in history. Afterwards we are able to trace back to that situation and gain a clear understanding of it and its importance. All of this is more so popular with writers than anyone else, they tend to use past experiences in their life to give their works more authenticity in describing their picture. There are very few aspects that contrast their work to their actual lives.

Can a writer’s life and experiences predict and/or validate their works? The child/ parent relationship that is portrayed by Kincaid, Lorde, and Roethke in “Girl, “From the House of YemanjÐ"ЎвЂќ, and “My Papa’s Waltz” is closely related to the relationship they experienced with their parents. These poems show much relevance between the writers and the relationship they shared with their parents, each one in its own special way. I feel that conscience writing is the subconscious thoughts of a person. Since writing is a way of expressing yourself and how you feel, there come times while writing you express those things in which you don’t want to actually speak and say. Writing about the situation becomes an outlet, a way for the person to vent, but with out have to deal with the situation face to face. This is done by creating characters, plots, and settings in the poems that may not be exactly accurate, but they are still very much relative.

Jamaica Kincaid and Audre Lorde are both Caribbean born writers, which gives them similarities in their poems and in their lifestyles. These two woman of the same culture are known to be closely bonded with their mothers, even if there is a love/hate type of relationship between them. In an interview with Kay Bonetti, the founder and directory of American Audio Prose Library (AAPL), when asked about her writings and her mother’s influence in one of her stories, Jamaica Kincaid states: “I was writing this story and I had a lot of information about my family and their history, and I used it in this way. My mother used to tell me a lot of things about herself. It’s perhaps one of the ways in which I became a writer.” A few lines later she speaks on how certain plots and settings are more subconscious than consciously picked and chose. In “Girl”, which is a dialogue between a daughter and mother who is providing guidance about becoming a lady to her teenage daughter in a list-like form the tone that it is written in gives me the feeling that she [the writer] is going through memories she had experienced. The mom speaks on all topics ranging from washing clothes, to getting rid of a child before it becomes a child and being allowed to feel the bakers’ bread. The reason it feels as if it’s a trip down memory lanes is the reoccurring underlined theme of becoming and/or being a sluttish young lady. This contributes to the fact that conscious writing being subconscious thoughts and shows the type of relationship Kincaid shared with her mother. Kincaid’s dealing with her mother’s constant pressures of doing well and being a better person was a positive and influence on her writings. This is shown in “Girl”, by taking notice to how all the advice mentioned is positive and instrumental to her growing up and well being. She was taught how to wash clothes, how to iron, cook, buy cotton, how to grow okra, and how to hygiene properly, everything that would be benefit her in the long run.

Audre Lorde’s relationship with her mother as portrayed in her poem “From the House of YemanjÐ"ЎвЂќ was ambivalent and secretive. It was secretive in the sense of it having many insecurities and uncertainties. Audre Lorde as defined by her: Was a Caribbean descendant, black woman, lesbian, mother poet, political activist and teacher. She was her mothers’ fifth and last born female child and encountered some difficulties as she grew up. She didn’t begin to speak until she was age of 4 and seeing how she was around so many different personalities all the time, she tried to develop a sense of self and distinction. Her first attempt was to change the way her name was spelled: her reasoning was that she “didn’t like the tail of the Y hanging down below the line in Audrey,” (Zami 24) so she decided to no longer use it. In regards to her mother-daughter relationship there weren’t any extracurricular activities going on; it remained just how it looks, a mother and a daughter coexisting. Being that she is a Caribbean bred writer also, like Kincaid she naturally has a strong bond/ connection with her mother, but in a different light. Mothers are a prominent feature in her culture in which Lorde is not afraid to speak of the relationship between the two of them. The relationship that is being talked about in “From the House of YemanjÐ"ЎвЂќ can be accepted as a direct correlation to the actual relationship of her and her mother. Her mother was her emotional “anchor”: that in which she relies and counts on for support. There were times in which they share very conflicting viewpoints and ideologies that can cause a tension between the both of them. In the poem she speaks on her mothers dimensions “My Mother had two faces and a frying pot/ where she cooked up her daughters into girls/ before she fixed our dinner. (Lorde, 153)” The two faces represent the difference in feeling and emotions she felt towards her mother. There were times when her mother would be very loving,