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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2021

‘the world was a strange place to be caught living in’: Aspects of Liminality in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John

Gerald Preher

Résumé

Jamaica Kincaid’s short story cycle Annie John, published in 1985, follows the life of the eponymous character from the age of ten till the age of seventeen. The crisis at the core originates in Annie John’s conflicting relationship with her mother, whom she used to admire and has come to hate. Very often she feels displaced—not only mentally but also geographically—and, in the end, she leaves her island in the West Indies to go to England, the “mother country.” Focusing on the evolution of Annie John from the beginning of her adolescence, this article will demonstrate that the character’s inner and outer conflicts are related to her country’s history, her understanding of that history, and her peculiar relationship with her (m)other. Since the publication of Frank O’Connor’s The Lonely Voice, it is generally assumed that short stories feature “outlawed figures wandering about the fringes of society” (18), this seems even more appropriate when looking at postcolonial short fiction because it makes the subaltern speak, to paraphrase Gayatri Spivak, and brings them to what might be called a marginal center. It is precisely the place where Annie John finds herself for she takes the Annie John in the novel’s title to the center while leaving her on the margin of the text that the book constitutes by presenting at herself as an object. It is not this Annie John but that Annie John, the reader meets in the course of the narrative.

Domaines

Littératures

Dates et versions

hal-04117266 , version 1 (05-06-2023)

Identifiants

Citer

Gerald Preher. ‘the world was a strange place to be caught living in’: Aspects of Liminality in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John. Laura Mª Lojo-Rodríguez; Jorge Sacido-Romero; Noemí Pereira-Ares. Postcolonial Youth in Contemporary British Fiction, Brill, pp.41-58, 2021, ⟨10.1163/9789004464261_004⟩. ⟨hal-04117266⟩
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