I just ordered Jamaica Kincaid’s collection of essays, Putting Myself Together: Writing 1974- (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 2025) and am keenly looking forward to reading it! It is especially meaningful to me that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote the introduction to this exciting selection of nonfiction writing; in the mid-80s, he was the one who introduced me to her work by giving me a copy of At the Bottom of the River.
Since I’m getting autobiographical here, let me underline that I am brimming with gratitude for those who first encouraged me to pivot ever so slightly from my chosen field, French Literature, to pursue Caribbean Comparative Literature: in alphabetical order, the late Dany Bébel-Gisler (whose words and presence inspired me at the first conference I attended in Puerto Rico, La Tercera Raíz…), Elrica D’Oyen (who sent me Her True-True Name—edited by Pamela Mordecai & Betty Wilson—in 1989), Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the late David I. Grossvogel (the dissertation adviser who supported and applauded my “pivot”—or expansion), and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, my dear friend and colleague, who mentored me since Rosario Ferré recommended her as “the person who knows more about my [Ferré’s] work than I do,” when I was embarking on my dissertation-writing. OK, back to Putting Myself Together!
Description: My ignorance was on my side. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t know what to be afraid of. I did one thing, I did another. I did what I now call crashing about. One day I started to write.
This collection of Jamaica Kincaid’s nonfiction writing, including early pieces from publications such as The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and Ms., proves what her admirers have always known: from the start, she has been a consummate stylist, and she has always been herself.
From “Jamaica Kincaid’s New York,” which narrates her move to the city from Antigua at the age of sixteen and a half, to the classic “Biography of a Dress,” her cultural criticism, and her original thinking about the meaning of the garden, Kincaid writes about the world as she finds it, imparting her own quizzical, rapier-sharp response to whatever crosses her path.
Putting Myself Together is a brilliant, trenchant, hilarious self-portrait of the artist and a testament to how this inimitable, self-created mind and spirit, endowed with wit, humor, and fearlessness, has become one of our greatest, most original writers.
Jamaica Kincaid was born in St. John’s, Antigua. Her books include At the Bottom of the River, Annie John, Lucy, The Autobiography of My Mother, My Brother, Mr. Potter, and See Now Then. She teaches at Harvard University and lives in Vermont.
For more information, see https://bookstore.centerforfiction.org/item/f10yIDkbWsuYcIY3hXouhQ
I just ordered Jamaica Kincaid’s collection of essays, Putting Myself Together: Writing 1974- (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August 2025) and am keenly looking forward to reading it! It is especially meaningful to me that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote the introduction to this exciting selection of nonfiction writing; in the mid-80s, he was the one
