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Thursday, January 22, 2004

Nor is Kincaid in any hurry to define herself as a post-colonial writer, and finds no connection with literary works of authors with Caribbean roots, such as V.S. Naipaul and Jean Rhys. "I had no idea that I was in this category. I remember a long time ago, in the early 80's after I published my first book, picking up a magazine in a bookstore that had something in it about colonial studies. It was an article by Edward Said, and there was my name among the post-colonial writers! I was very surprised. It seems to me that I only happen to be writing in this period of post-colonialism."

-- From an interview with Jamaica Kincaid in, of all places, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz--she's currently writer in residence at Tel Aviv University. (Naipaul would probably not be pleased to hear himself characterised as a "post-colonial writer ... with Caribbean roots", & Jean Rhys would have had no idea what "post-colonial" means.)

Meanwhile, Caryl Phillips is in Ghana, & Derek Walcott is heading to Scotland....

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