Autumn 2015 Special Author(s):
Jean Rhys and Jamaica Kincaid & the Postcolonial Caribbean
Course Tutor: Denise deCaires Narain ; Office: B268
e-mail: safb4@sussex.ac.uk
Jean Rhys and Jamaica Kincaid are two of the most prominent women writers from the
Caribbean. Their work has generated a great deal of critical attention as well as debate
about how their texts might be placed in relation to existing literary categories
including the Caribbean, feminist, postcolonial, and modernist. This course introduces
you to their most significant publications in relation to key critical discussions about:
‘race’, nation, ‘voice’, gender, sexuality, landscape, the autobiographical, migration &
diaspora, and questions of ‘literary and cultural belonging’.
The primary reading is listed below and a full course outline will be put on SyD before
week 1 of term.
Please read as many of the primary texts as you can before term starts – you will need
to purchase these as the library holds very limited numbers (they have a policy of 1
book for every 8 students on a course) and some of the texts by Kincaid are difficult to
get hold of in the UK.
Writing and Reading Exercise for Week 1: “One is not born a woman a woman, one
becomes one” I’d like you to think about de Beauvoir’s famous formulation about the
way gender is culturally produced in relation to Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys
& Annie John (1983) by Jamaica Kincaid. What are the specific cultural constraints on
‘girlhood’ that the two texts identify? What possibilities are presented for evading
patriarchal constructions of gender roles? Consider how the aesthetic/formal qualities
are crucial to each writer’s arguments about becoming a woman/lady/slut.
Dip into any of the many books and articles that focus on Jean Rhys or Jamaica Kincaid
and start compiling a chronology of aspects of their lives and texts that strike you as
interesting or relevant to you r reading of the two novels – noting any similarities and
differences between them. Please come to the first class with at least 800 words of notes
in response to your reading.
Primary Texts
(** indicates texts which can be ‘dipped into’)
Jean Rhys
Short story collection: Tigers are Better-Looking**
Novels:
After Leaving Mr McKenzie
Voyage in the Dark
Good Morning, Midnight
Wide Sargasso Sea
Non-fiction:
Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography**
The Letters of Jean Rhys (eds Francis Wyndham and Diana Melly)**
Jamaica Kincaid
Short story collection: At The Bottom of the River**
Novels:
Annie John
Lucy
Autobiography of My Mother
Mr Potter
See Now Then
Non-fiction:
My Brother**
A Small Place
My Garden (Book) **
Selection of Secondary Reading:
There is a great deal of material on Rhys and Kincaid; the list below is indicative rather
than exhaustive)
Veronica Marie Gregg, Jean Rhys’ Historical Imagination: Reading and Writing the Creole
Elaine Savory, Jean Rhys
Helen Carr, Jean Rhys
Carole Angier, Jean Rhys
Pierrette Frickey,Critical Perspectives on Jean Rhys
Sue Thomas, The Worlding of Jean Rhys
Mary Conde & Thorunn Lonsdale eds., Caribbean Women Writers: Fiction in English,
Chap 5, ‘Literary Allusion in the fiction of Jean Rhys’
Nora Gaines, Jean Rhys Review
Coral Ann Howells, Jean Rhys
Mary Lou Emery, Jean Rhys at “World’s End”: Novels of Colonial and Sexual Exile
http://www.lennoxhonychurch.com/jeanrhysbio.cfm#timeline (for a reasonably
reliable bio)
Antonia MacDonald-Smythe, Making Homes in the West Indies: Michele Cliff and Jamaica
Kincaid
Moira Fergusson, Jamaica Kincaid: Where the land Meets the Body
Linda Lang-Peralta, ed., Jamaica Kincaid and Caribbean Double Crossings, Univ of
Delaware Press, 2006
J.D Edwards, Understanding Jamaica Kincaid
Giovanni Covi, Jamaica Kincaid’s Prismatic Subjects
Special issue of the journal, Callaloo, 25.3 (2002) focuses on Kincaid’s work
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Kincaid.html (for a reasonably reliable bio)
Background reading on the Caribbean historical and literary context:
‘Gendering the Cribbean’ on SyD
Knight, F & Palmer, C(eds.) The Modern Caribbean
Reynolds, E Stand the Storm: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade
O’Callaghan, E Woman Version: Theoretical Approaches to West Indian Fiction by Women
Shalini Puri, The Postcolonial Caribbean
Mimi Sheller, Consuming the Caribbean
Alison Donnell, Twentieth Century Caribbean Literature