Jamaica Kincaid

Lucy is a young woman from Antigua who has made her way to New York City, where she is an au pair, caring for four young girls, the daughters of a wealthy couple. Lucy is studying nursing in the evenings, making friends, taking lovers. She is miserable in New York. It is cold; she is homesick; she is tired of hearing rich people talk about nothing as if it were everything. The book follows Lucy's first year in New York, her awakenings, her daily life, her enthusiasms, her plans.

Lucy is not likeable for at least half of this short book. She is full of anger and contempt, not just for rich people, but for everything she encounters. She deliberately hurts people with the barbs of her tongue. She scorns the kind gestures and the confidences of her female employer, Mariah.

I hated her. I hated Lucy for her nastiness, her anger, her refusal to relax her guard. She was a black girl from a tropical island who'd been given a chance to better herself, and she just didn't care. "She should be more grateful", I thought, several times.

Do you hear it? I heard it. I thought she should be grateful. I wanted the young black girl to be better behaved because she had a job as a domestic worker, a servant by another name, for a family who treated her well. I wanted her to be nicer to the white family she worked for. I didn't know that white privilege runs through my veins, that casual racism is part of my makeup. In this week of Harry and Meghan's interview with Oprah, I was proud that I didn't treat black people any different than white people, people with skin like mine. I was wrong.

So this book was an eye-opener. I was not prepared to find my thoughts about race were suspect. It was the first warm day of not-quite spring. There was a warm breeze. It was a nice day in my all-white neighbourhood. The things you learn when you read. Do all white people feel like I do? Is it a sign of growth that I now recognize that my inner monologue is not as lofty as I believed yesterday, that nice warm day? Or is that just more white privilege, another way of saying "I understand the problem of racism because I've been woken up by a novella"? I don't know. Food for thought. I have much to learn, and much to unlearn too.

The book got four stars because I was profoundly uncomfortable with the vivid sex scenes. They were very well written; they aroused me, and I felt ashamed for the sensations of my body during a description of sex involving a nineteen year old girl.… (more)

In this short novel, 19-year-old Lucy leaves her home in Antigua and comes to America to be an au pair for a family of four young children. The book is set over the stretch of a year and follows her experiences as a new immigrant. Lucy has come to America to get away from stifling relationships and a particularly toxic relationship with her martyr of a mother, but she cannot really connect with anyone, drifting through relationships with men and even holding her only friend, Peggy, at arm’s length. I felt I wanted to know more about why she left home, filled her with the rage that seethes through her, numbing her from seizing the day, enjoying the wonderous moments of her life, and wallowing in her never-named unfulfilled expectations. The most interesting observation to me: “Everyone knew that men have no morals, that they do not know how to behave, that they do not know how to treat other people. It was why men like laws so much; it was why they had to invent such things--they need a guide.” Food for thought for sure.… (more)

This author is very angry, and I felt chastised! First among various reasons for being a tourist! It should be required reading for anyone vacationing in the Caribbean, where the tourists have plenty and the locals do not. Take for instance, water. Tourists can swim in it, and then bathe in it, and drink as much as they like. But many islands have no water source so the locals have to conserve every last drop. From there, the author delves into how the residents of Antigua came to live there—slave ships, and the dire faults in the English empire. It’s a tongue-lashing for sure.… (more)