ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses life history of Jamaica Kincaid, a feminist thinker. Kincaid's life and themes in her writing speak to the experiences of myriad exiled women and communities as she transforms diaspora thinking from a feminist perspective. She had the fraught experience of having the best of a British colonial education. Central themes in Kincaid's work are the devastation of colonialism and imperialism, migration and diaspora, exile and loss, global inequalities, self-exploration and family. These feminist and broader themes in Kincaid's work are also perennial Jewish themes. Kincaid's notions of homes/exiles stem from creation of the African diaspora formed through patriarchy and other modes of devaluing humans, most significantly here, the slave trade. In her feminist thinking, she employs tropes of loss, longing, and melancholy to support agency, to survive and to thrive through the creation of beautiful works of art, scathing political analysis, and a life well lived in a nexus of individual and communal relationships.
