Jamaica Kincaid: The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is...

America is not so much a country as it is an idea, and that must be why so many people are drawn to it, the idea of it, the idea that you might be free of your past, free of the traditions that kept you in your own traditions - that is the idea of it: freedom from your very own self.

Jamaica Kincaid

self country past

I write a lot in my head. The revision goes on internally. It's not spontaneous and it doesn't have a schedule.

Jamaica Kincaid

schedules goes-on writing

At the time I was taught to read, it was an Eden-like time of my life. My mother adored me. Everyone adored me. So I associate reading with enormous pleasure.

Jamaica Kincaid

eden reading mother

I think a woman is powerless if she cannot freely claim the right to her reproductive capacity. Society can talk about anything it likes, except a woman's reproductive existence.

Jamaica Kincaid

likes claims thinking

Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.

Jamaica Kincaid

taken simple world

But some natives--most natives in the world--cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go--so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they enjoy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.

Jamaica Kincaid

boredom envy reality

I think life is difficult and that's that. I am not at all - absolutely not at all - interested in the pursuit of happiness. I am not interested in the pursuit of positivity. I am interested in pursuing a truth, and the truth often seems to be not happiness but its opposite.

Jamaica Kincaid

pursuit-of-happiness positivity thinking

Love and hatred don't take turns; they exist side by side at the same time. And one's duty, one's obligation every day, is to choose to follow the nobler one.

Jamaica Kincaid

duty hatred sides

I've written a book about my mother, and I don't remember anyone going to Antigua or calling up my mother and verifying her life. There is something about this book that drives people mad with the autobiographical question.

Jamaica Kincaid

mother book people

I like melancholy. I like to pretend that I'm alone in the world and I'm just sort of abandoned.

Jamaica Kincaid

abandoned melancholy world

In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other.

Jamaica Kincaid

writing trying people

I wouldn't mind being labeled as "angry," if it wasn't used once again to denigrate and belittle.

Jamaica Kincaid

belittle used mind

For me, writing isn't a way of being public or private; it's just a way of being. The process is always full of pain, but I like that. It's a reality, and I just accept it as something not to be avoided. This is the life I have. This is the life I write about.

Jamaica Kincaid

pain writing reality

In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other. And the important thing isn't whether I'm angry. The more important thing is, is it true? Do these things really happen?

Jamaica Kincaid

important writing people

if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of people reading. I never think of people, period.

Jamaica Kincaid

reading writing thinking

I don't feel I'm angry. I feel as though I'm describing something true. If I had stabbed my husband, I could understand being called "angry." If I had an affair with my husband's best friend and written about that experience, I could see the anger. But I'm not doing that.

Jamaica Kincaid

affair husband feels

What I don't write is as important as what I write.

Jamaica Kincaid

crafts important writing

What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the different ways human beings organize the two.

Jamaica Kincaid

justice writing two

Everything I do is because of writing. If I go for a walk, it's because I'm thinking of writing. I go look at flowers, I go look at the garden, I go look at a museum, but it's all coming back to writing.

Jamaica Kincaid

garden flower writing

People think if you describe someone with glistening brown skin you're writing about race, as if the whole of the African diaspora is in someone's brown skin.

Jamaica Kincaid

race writing thinking

The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable.