Negotiating Hall's Caribbean Identity in Kincaid's Annie John

Kingston's story seeks meaning in the Chinese culture system in order to strengthen her individual identity. It also shows that certain aspects of the people and traditions of a cultural background can be disturbing at times. "To be a woman, to have a daughter in starvation time was enough... Women in the old China did not choose (Kingston 6)." The Chinese community that held the most meaning for Kingston's cultural identity had been lost somewhere in the past. The only knowledge Kingston has of anything Chinese had come from her mother, but that was not enough for her. She has only vague memories and imaginations of such a community that serve as a backdrop for the goal she seeks in strengthening her identity in relation to her ancestral and cultural makeup.

It’s hard to imagine someone’s personal experience without actually being the one enduring it; however, Jamaica Kincaid’s use of language contests other wise.Through intense imagery and emotional response, Jamaica Kincaid utilizes rhetorical appeals such as logos, pathos, and ethos, which successfully convinces her audience by creating a conversation between herself and the reader. Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place is an expression of her inner feelings on the transformation her hometown, Antigua, and the everlasting postcolonial impact that occurs. Kincaid reacts to the feelings she had as a young girl and compares that mindset to the opinions she holds today as an adult. Kincaid’s piece evaluates the foreignness, race, and power that consumes Antigua. While she descriptively explains the circumstances she faced in Antigua, Kincaid incorporates historical background which provides logical support to her purpose. Notably, the author’s first hand experiences gives her credibility, ethos, and allows the audience to clearly understand the context from her perspective. Not only does Kincaid effectively describe her experiences, but she also makes her audience feel as though they are looking through her eyes. Her purpose demonstrates the difficulty and impossibility of returning to origin after crucial influences. A Small Place proves that the effects of racism and racial inequality are long term and culture cannot simply return exactly how it once was in that specific culture,

Themes of Family togetherness and love are illustrated through the article “Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid. Throughout the text Western Caribbean familial practices are discussed. Upon closer examination, the reader is presented with a series of images demonstrating customary cultural practices and moral principles that a Caribbean woman passes along to her young daughter. In the Case of Jamaica Kincaid, she has been influenced by common advice she received from her elders, in attempts to make the life ahead of her easier. In fact, the insight given is hoped to deflect her from bringing shame amongst the family. Moreover, the advices she receives from particularly her mother, are a mother's way of insuring that her daughter has the tools that she needs to survive as an adult in society. Inclusively, the fact that the mother takes the time to train her daughter on the proper ways for a lady to act in their culture is indicative of their familial love. The article "the girl" illustrates themes of familial love, cultural customs, and maternal bond through the eyes of a young black female growing up in the island of Antigua in a quasi society.

The author’s different styles of writing attract different audiences. Momaday uses a historical approach to storytelling while Kingston uses a personal and social approach. Both authors engage their readers by using metaphors, similes, and an individual style of writing. Yet they use these rhetorical devices to make different points and to draw different conclusions from the past. Ultimately, these rhetorical devices convey the oral traditions in each passage that provide the history of different cultural

1. Describe the focus or focalization in Girl. Do we see what one person sees, or observe one person in particular? Describe the voice of the narrator in Girl. Who is the “you”? How do the focus and voice contribute to the reader’s response to the story?It about a girl’s womanhood set at the moment of separation between the age of innocence and the confusing, transfiguring entrance into womanhood experience. It is the story of a mother’s attempt to train her adolescent daughter to learn appropriate cultural customs and more important, the rules of social behavior, especially that of proper sexual conduct befitting a well-reared girl. Yes! We observe what the mother is trying to teach her young daughterto do for a man. It helps her too learned in order, to achieve something that her mother is trying to teach her to do and how to act as a young woman and what to expect as a young woman growing up.

The Unites States is a true melting pot of ethnicities and cultures. For many members of minority groups a certain hybridity is readily adopted, but for others, cultural assimilation can be quite difficult. Chicana author, Sandra Cisneros described this phenomenon as “always straddling two countries… but not belonging to either culture” (Doyle. 54). African American author, Alice Walker shared Cisneros’ sentiment, but focused her attention on the assimilation of black cultures and subcultures within the United States. Cisneros and Walker make the same poignant statement about the strains of cultural assimilation, with reconciliation of split identities as the goal, in their respective works, 1991’s “Woman Hollering Creek,” and 1973’s “Everyday Use,” yet their unique ethnic perspectives allow them to make it in surprisingly different ways.

The examination of black women's need to keep their powerful heritage and identity is important to the protagonist in “Everyday Use.” Walker uses the mother’s voice to show the trials and tribulations of a small African American family located in the South. She speaks on multiple levels, voicing the necessity and strength of being true to one's roots and past; that heritage is not just something to talk about, but to live and enjoy in order for someone to fully understand themselves. Unlike Kincaid, Walker gives her black female character’s an identity of their own, each in their own right, and observes the internal conflicts of each mother and daughters struggle with identity. The mother represents a simple content way of life where identity and heritage are valued for both its usefulness, as well as its personal significance. In order to illustrate how the mother viewed identity versus her daughters, Walker quickly acknowledges that the mother has inherited many customs and traditions from her ancestors. She describes herself as a large big-boned woman with rough man-working hands (485). She also describes here various abilities including, killing and cleaning a hog as mercilessly as a man. Being able to work hard and not care about being such a lady, is how the mother defines identity at this point. On the other hand, the two daughters each have opposing views on the value and worth of the different items

Kincaid, Jamaica.“Girl”. In The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 541-542. Print.

Elaine Potter Richardson, more famously known as Jamaica Kincaid, is recognized for her writings that suggest depictions of relationships between families, mainly between a mother and daughter, and her birth place, Antigua, an island located in the West Indies. She is also familiarized with Afrocentrism and feminist point of views. Kincaid’s work is filled heavily with visual imagery that produces a mental picture in readers that helps them connect stronger to the reading. An example of this really shines through in her short story piece, “Girl.” This short story describes the life of a lower class woman living in the West Indies, and also incorporates thick detailing between the relationship between her and her mother. Jamaica Kincaid structures the story as if her mother is speaking to her. She writes broad, but straight to the point, allowing readers to imagine to picture her experience. Kincaid uses visual imagery and repetition consistently throughout “Girl” to reveal the theme and tone of the story; conflictual affair between a mother and daughter.

"You think because I am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has lived for nineteen years. Over and over, we are told of the limitations on choice--"it was the only way"; "They persuaded me" and verbs of necessity recur for descriptions of both the mother's and Emily's behavior. " In such statements as "my wisdom ! came too late," the story verges on becoming an analysis of parental guilt. With the narrator, we construct an image of the mother's own development: her difficulties as a young mother alone with her daughter and barely surviving during the early years of the depression; her painful months of enforced separation from her daughter; her gradual and partial relaxation in response to a new husband and a new family as more children follow; her increasingly complex anxieties about her first child; and finally her sense of family balance which surrounds but does not quite include the early memories of herself and Emily in the grips of survival needs. In doing so she has neither trivialized nor romanticized the experience of motherhood; she has indicated the wealth of experience yet to be explored in the story’s possibilities of experiences, like motherhood, which have rarely been granted serious literary consideration. Rather she is searching for

Imagine yourself being a person wearing colorful clothes in a room filled with people wearing all black. You obviously stand out. However, every time you try to make friends , people would turn away and at you funny. Feeling alienated or alone may come to mind. Thats a feeling many can relate to Discrimnation in America has been a problem for generations.To gain insight and to combat the issue, it is imporant to read narratives of people that have been though or felt oppressed .The connection between both of these autobiographical essays is how society made them quetion their identities.. By examining “How It feels to be to be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”by Gloria Anzaldua , the reader can see how the author 's’ individuality makes them strive to figure out their identity in a new environment. Both of these authors retain their confidence and their culture in a new environment in different ways

Yet an explicit affirmation of this hatred is not necessary; the reader is quick to appreciate the irony and utter absurdity of her situation and that of Antigua. Kincaid makes us want to condemn the imperialistic attitudes which fostered this indoctrination of English values and also the supposition that this culture was somehow inherently superior to any other. By putting her readers in her own position, and by appealing to their sense of the absurd, Kincaid is very effectively able to elicit sympathy.

In “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, Kincaid explicitly describes the effects and consequences that imperialism had on Antigua, while implicitly condemning imperialism for the effects and consequences indigenous people endured through allegory. Examining the results of imperialism in a cultural aspect provides a deeper connection for the audience to fathom the struggle people of Antigua experienced. Kincaid illustrates herself as the main protagonist who directly speaks to the audience as if they are the ignorant tourist. Through the utilization of the second person perspective, she immerses the reader emotionally, which through the experience proves to be more captivating.

The order in which I read a couple of the text for this class has allowed me to better understand why the characters in the novel do what they do. It has allowed me to put pieces together and get an understanding of the histories and experiences that were stripped and taken away from the people of Trinidad and Jamaica. One of the first pieces of literature I read for this class was Stuart Hall’s essay Cultural Identity and Diaspora. This essay created a framework and shaped the way I perceived the following novel— The Pagoda by Patricia Powell. Hall’s essay broke down two notions of what cultural identity is and through this, I have come to understand why Powell's main character—Mr. Lowe, identified himself as a transgender female as a

In part, my desired shift of critical focus is a response against the predominant tendency in Anglo-American literary studies of underestimating the formal experimentation of early twentieth-century Caribbean writing. Critics tend to construct narratives in which British, American, and continental European writers set the standard for and carry out the work of producing modernist experimentation. Those few critics who have turned their attention to James' fiction continue to follow suit of this general critical trend. Paget Henry and Paul Buhle have remarked that this author’s value lies in his status as "an anti-colonial writer," an identity that they believe to be affirmed by Minty Alley because of the "careful artistic representation [that it] gives to the lives of working-class Trinidadians" and its "affirmation of the creative self-projections that such individuals established in relation to their world" (122). James did envision his novel as a populist one, affirming his own mothers's adage that "[t]o write forblack people in the Caribbean was a distinction" (James interviewedin Henry and Buhle 57). But does its accessibility to a contemporary audience preclude the incorporation of experimental elements? Aldon Lynn Nielsen, a prominent promoter of James’s workin this country, perpetuates the mythos that "modernist"