Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons^™

The Emergence Of Voice And Identity In The Context Of The Neocolonial Experience: The Writings Of Jamaica Kincaid, Kirstin Ruth Bratt

Culminating Projects in English

Jamaica Kincaid's novels Annie John and Lucy demonstrate a marked resistance to Western philosophy and the British literary canon. The writings of Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Patricia Hill Collins provide useful frameworks for viewing Kincaid's work. Ngugi's metaphor of "moving the centre," combined with Hill Collins' theories of Black feminism are both useful in examining the issues of voice and identity in the neo-colonial experience.

Critics have attempted to identify Kincaid's work as either coming-of-age, pre-oedipal narrative, feminist, or autobiographical. While these categories can also be useful in reading Kincaid's work, they are also limited in their ability to define …