New Releases by Jamaica Kincaid

Winner of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay 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.

A unique collaboration from two of America’s leading artists that explores the fascinating and hidden history of the plant world. In this witty, deeply original book, the renowned novelist Jamaica Kincaid offers an ABC of the plants that define our world and reveals the often brutal history behind them. Kara Walker, one of America’s greatest visual artists, illustrates each entry with provocative, brilliant, enthralling, many-layered watercolors. There has never been a book like An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children—so inventive, surprising, and telling about what our gardens reveal.

LA ÚLTIMA Y GALARDONADA NOVELA DE LA CANDIDATA AL PREMIO NOBEL JAMAICA KINCAID Premio Femina Étranger * American Book Award * Dan David Prize * The Paris Review Hadada Award «Una de las pocas escritoras angloparlantes actuales a las que querría leer siempre». Susan Sontag «Es como si Gertrude Stein y Virginia Woolf hubieran colaborado para escribir la elegía de un ama de casa desconsolada. [...] Una prosa magnética». NPR Desde la ventana de su casa, la señora Sweet mira en perspectiva su presente y su pasado, su ahora y su entonces. La conmovedora anatomía que dibuja de un matrimonio decadente —el señor Sweet ha empezado a odiarla— también nos habla de una juventud rota, ya que ella emigró a Estados Unidos «en un barco bananero», como su marido se empeña en señalar. Pese a la felicidad y el alivio que le proporcionan sus hijos, el joven Heracles y la bella Perséfone, pocas cosas pueden distraerla de su obsesión por los erráticos progresos de su jardín o alejarla de la habitación contigua a la cocina donde a menudo se encierra para interrogar al pasado. Jamaica Kincaid envuelve al lector en un mundo a la vez familiar y sorprendente en su novela más audaz hasta la fecha, que algunos han interpretado como una oda a la venganza y que, al igual que Lucia Berlin, difumina deliberadamente los límites entre lo ficticio y lo autobiográfico. La crítica ha dicho... «Las fuentes bien informadas de Estocolmo llevan unos cuantos años susurrando el nombre de Jamaica Kincaid como seria candidata al premio Nobel de Literatura». Xavi Ayén, La Vanguardia «No se me ocurre ningún otro escritor cuya voz contenga tal intensidad de rabia y amor. Es un sonido mágico, bíblico y lleno de música». Mona Simpson, The Paris Review «Kincaid tiene el don de dotar la experiencia común de una ferocidad mítica. [...] Es una de las escritoras más vívidas y explosivas del momento. [...] Con una prosa mágica y múltiples puntos de vista al estilo de La señora Dalloway, Ahora y entonces examina [...] la naturaleza defectuosa de la percepción. Su fuerza y originalidad radican en la incapacidad de su autora para morderse la lengua y en su insistencia en poner sobre la mesa las verdades domésticas más incómodas». Fernanda Eberstadt, The New York Times Book Review «Fascinante. Cada escena late con tanta vida que uno siente que podría arrancar todas sus páginas, tirarlas al aire, recogerlas y leerlas en cualquier orden, y en cualquier rincón del libro encontraría la prosa maravillosa, sublime y valiente de Kincaid». Los Angeles Times «Una intensidad que recuerda a Virginia Woolf». Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune (Libro del mes) «Un arte y un lenguaje inimitables». Ru Freeman, The Nation «Atrevida y hermosa. [...] ¿Joyceana? También. [...] Encantadora, melodiosa, compleja. [...] Hay aquí valentía y genio». Karen Brady, Buffalo News «Embriagadora, [...] tiene una prosa que se enrosca y aferra a los lectores». Walton Muyumba, Dallas Morning News

Per molti Antigua è soltanto un’isola di spiagge bianchissime accarezzate dagli alisei, una per ciascun giorno dell’anno. Jamaica Kincaid, che ci è nata, ce ne mostra una faccia diversa. E, d’improvviso, è come se nello smalto verdeazzurro dei Caraibi si scoprisse una ferita in suppurazione, prodotta da politici predatori, interessati solo a perpetuare lo sfruttamento di chi, tanto tempo fa, colonizzò l’isola. Nulla riesce a contenere l’incalzare degli insulti che, con algida insofferenza, Jamaica Kincaid riversa su tutti, turisti compresi. Nulla riesce a placare il suo furore, neppure la consapevolezza che i discendenti dei colonizzatori siedono ormai «sul mucchio di immondizie della storia». Che il turista sprovveduto sfogli pure le pagine patinate delle solite guide: chi metterà in valigia questo scarno libretto scorgerà un’altra Antigua, che porta ancora i segni terribili di «una malattia europea» ma è finalmente «un luogo» ben distinto – e non il fondale per un dépliant pubblicitario. Come ha scritto Salman Rushdie, «Un posto piccolo» è «una lamentazione di grande forza e lucidità che si potrebbe definire torrenziale se il linguaggio non fosse controllato con tanta finezza».

A beautifully illustrated story of three girls caught up in the most curious of mysteries. " Party has layers. It functions as a subtle message about what it means to witness horror to such a degree that we lose our language for it; it is a quiet story about coming of age, suddenly, as a young black girl because of what the world shows us. It is about the many words our silence can hold, the way our absences can ring as loudly and discordantly as the words we do feel able to say." — Literary Hub Three girls—Pam, Bess, and Sue—attend a party to celebrate the publication of the first of the Nancy Drew mystery books. There are many distractions at the fancy affair: flower arrangements, partygoers, refreshments, and lots and lots of marble. Suddenly, the oldest girl, Pam, sees what can only be described as something truly . . . bilious . . . not good! Bess sees it too. The youngest, Sue, does not, and as usual she has a hard time getting anyone to tell her anything. Party: A Mystery is a beautifully drawn adventure story that promises questions that will grab children, but does not guarantee an answer.

›Mein Bruder‹ erzählt von der Rückkehr Jamaica Kincaids in ihre karibische Heimat und von einem Abschied. Ihr Bruder Devon, ein Mensch mit charismatischer Ausstrahlung, ist an Aids erkrankt. Er stirbt mit 33 Jahren. Als Jamaica Kincaid nach Antigua kommt, ist es ein Eintauchen in all das, was sie als junge Frau zurückgelassen hat: die üppige Fülle der Karibik, hinter der sich ein hartes Leben verbirgt. Indem die Autorin ihrem sterbenden Bruder eine Stimme verleiht, gibt sie der Sehnsucht nach einem Leben Ausdruck, das mehr ist als die Bilanz seines Scheiterns. (Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine frühere Ausgabe.)

Nel romanzo che segna il suo ritorno dopo dieci anni di silenzio, Jamaica Kincaid, ormai lontana dai Caraibi, ci racconta la storia di un matrimonio – un matrimonio fiu00adnito. Il suo, forse: l''epoca, la casa (nel Vermont), il marito (musicista), i figli (un maschio e una femmina), la professione della signora Sweet (scrittrice) corrispondono in tutto e per tutto alla vita reale dell''auu00adtrice. Come sempre, tuttavia, la sua corrosiva, inconfondibile prosa è più estranea all''autobiografiu00adsmo di quanto non appaia a prima vista: la stessa Kincaid ha del resto dichiarato che «il protagonista di questo romanzo è il Tempo». E si potrebbe aggiungere che un''auu00adra mitologica e visionaria irradia da una narrazione che è come un''invettiva infuocata – e a tratti esilarante –, dove non a caso i figli della signora Sweet si chiamano Eracle e Persefone. Ma poiché la casa è "un carcere con la secondina dentro», la moglie "quella brutta strega arrivata con la nave delle banane» e il marito "così piccolo che a volte la gente ... lo scambiava per un roditore», ci renderemo conto, pagina dopo pagina, che la signora Sweet, proprio come la Xuela delu00adl''Autou00adbiografia di mia madre, è soprattutto un''au00adbitante di quell''inferno interiore che Jamaica Kincaid sa raffigurau00adre in maniera inimitabile.

A marriage is revealed in all its joys and agonies. This piercing examination of the manifold ways in which the passing of time operates on the human consciousness unfolds gracefully, and Kincaid inhabits each of her characters as they move, in their own minds, between the present, the past, and the future--jacket.

In this delightful hybrid of a book—part memoir and part travel journal—the bestselling author takes us deep into the mountains of Nepal with a trio of botanist friends in search of native Himalayan plants that will grow in her Vermont garden. Alighting from a plane in the dramatic Annapurna Valley, the ominous signs of Nepal''s Maoist guerrillas are all around—an alarming presence that accompanies the travelers throughout their trek. Undaunted, the group sets off into the mountains with Sherpas and bearers, entering an exotic world of spectacular landscapes, vertiginous slopes, isolated villages, herds of yaks, and giant rhododendron, thirty feet tall. The landscape and flora and so much else of what Kincaid finds in the Himalaya—including fruit bats, colorful Buddhist prayer flags, and the hated leeches that plague much of the trip—are new to her, and she approaches it all with an acute sense of wonder and a deft eye for detail. In beautiful, introspective prose, Kincaid intertwines the harrowing Maoist encounters with exciting botanical discoveries, fascinating daily details, and lyrical musings on gardens, nature, home, and family. From the Trade Paperback edition.

"¿Novela de iniciación? ¿Rebeldía de una hija ante una ausencia ominosa? ¿Fusión de la narrativa de género con la opresión del Imperio? Autobiografía de mi madre tiene que ver con todo eso pero sus alcances trascienden largemente los ejes mencionados. El lacerante texto de Kincaid puede leerse como una balada sobre la pérdida y, también, como la recuperación de lo efímero a través de la palabra. Valiente registro de la historia personal de la autora esta ''autobiografía'' habla de un personaje casi invisible que a lo largo del relato se vuelve omnipresente. Kincaid escribe con pasión y rabia, sin perder por ello la excelencia narrativa. Xuela, la protagonista, va mutando de niña huérfana a mujer en medio de un relato poblado de madres, hermanas y esposas, cuyas tensas relaciones son la materia prima de la saga. La familia, la escuela, la pareja, el sexo y el lamentable saldo del colonialismo se mixturan en esta historia enhebrada desde una franqueza brutal y, a la vez, con una conmovedora delicadeza"--Cover, p. 4.

Welcome to Ian Frazier''s New York, a city more downtown than up, where every block is an event, and where the denizens are larger than life. Meet landlord extraordinaire Zvi Hugo Segal, and the man who climbed the World Trade Center, and an eighty-three-year-old typewriter repairman whose shop on Fulton Street has drawers full of umlauts. Learn the location of Manhattan''s antipodes, and meander the length of Route 3 to New Jersey. Like his literary forbears Joseph Mitchell and A.J. Liebling, Frazier, in his bewitching, inimitable voice, makes us fall in love with America''s greatest city all over again, the way he did, arriving as a young man from Hudson, Ohio. In classic evocations of the F train, Canal Street, and Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and in his iconic "Bags in Trees" essay, Frazier gives us New York again, in all its vital and human multiplicity.

Lucy has left the West Indies for a job in New York, but she discovers that her employers'' perfect lives are not what they seem.

From " The Talk of the Town," Jamaica Kincaid''s first impressions of snobbish, mobbish New York Talk Pieces is a collection of Jamaica Kincaid''s original writing for the New Yorker''s "Talk of the Town," composed during the time when she first came to the United States from Antigua, from 1978 to 1983. Kincaid found a unique voice, at once in sync with William Shawn''s tone for the quintessential elite insider''s magazine, and (though unsigned) all her own--wonderingly alive to the ironies and screwball details that characterized her adopted city. New York is a town that, in return, fast adopts those who embrace it, and in these early pieces Kincaid discovers many of its hilarious secrets and urban mannerisms. She meets Miss Jamaica, visiting from Kingston, and escorts the reader to the West Indian-American Day parade in Brooklyn; she sees Ed Koch don his "Cheshire-cat smile" and watches Tammy Wynette autograph a copy of Lattimore''s Odyssey; she learns the worlds of publishing and partying, of fashion and popular music, and how to call a cauliflower a crudite. The book also records Kincaid''s development as a young writer--the newcomer who sensitively records her impressions here takes root to become one of our most respected authors.

Jamaica Kincaid''s first obsession, the island of Antigua, comes vibrantly to life under the gaze of Mr. Potter, an illiterate taxi chauffeur. In her most ambitious work to date, Kincaid breathes life into a figure unlike any in contemporary fiction, an individual consciousness emerging out of an unexamined life.

A collection of essays in which author Jamaica Kincaid discusses all she loves about gardening and plants.

Kincaid''s poetic and often shockingly frank account of Devon''s life is also the story of their family on the island of Antigua.

A collection of stories which plunges the reader into an intensely physical world, partly remembered, partly divined: a childhood in the Caribbean, defined by fierce emotion and poverty co-existing uneasily with teatime, churchgoing and British schoolbooks about frostbitten chimney-sweeps.

" Ma mère est morte au moment où je suis née, aussi toute ma vie n''y a-t-il jamais rien eu entre moi et l''éternité; dans mon dos soufflait toujours un vent lugubre et noir. Je ne pouvais pas savoir, au début, que ce serait comme ça". Puissant, troublant et sensuel, Autobiographie de la ma mère est le roman d''une femme qui cherche à saisir l''essence même de la vie. Fille d''une mère caraïbe et d''un père métis pour lequel elle n''éprouve que peur, Xuela Claudette Richardson se replie dans une solitude hautaine, dans une frigidité implacable et superbe, hantée par l''impossible amour qu''elle éprouve pour sa mère disparue. Par son écriture limpide et incisive, Jamaica Kincaid, originaire des Petites Antilles, prête à ce destin désespéré, sans autre certitude que celle de la mort qui rôde dans " l''espace noir du monde ", sa voix de femme forte et singulière, dont la portée rejoint aux Etats-Unis celle de Toni Morrison.