Jamaica Kincaid Writing Style

Frederick Lenz said, “Some people like a harsh teacher. They feel like the demands make them learn more quickly. Some like a gentle teacher because they feel that makes them learn more quickly,” but what exactly makes a harsh teacher? How can they effectively communicate ideas through being blunt and harsh? Is it reflected in many of their readings? While examining A Small Place, written by Jamaica Kincaid, the chosen writing techniques mixed with Kincaid’s raw emotions creates a wide range of reactions in her readers. This leads to inform them about Kincaid’s topic.
The author uses her writing style to colorfully bring organization to her writing and still maximizes emotions in her readers, to Kincaid’s advantage. Kincaid’s writing style is

Kincaid's explains the reasoning behind her writing style when she addresses another one of her writings, “I didn’t like the way young white Americans wrote - a deadpan way… They don’t really write, they just mention things.” (Metzger 1167) Now, the “young white Americans,” as she puts it, find this statement very ironic. They think she’s the one mentioning things. Kincaid doesn’t seem to have any formal structure in her writing. Still, she is able to create her own unique structure by focusing into the drama of her writing. We can see this level of thought she puts into her writing when she talks about, “Every horrible thing that a horsefly could do was known by heart to my mother, and in her innocence, she thought the doctor shared the same crazy obsession - germs.” (Kincaid 29) Kincaid tries to honor her mother by saying “innocence” instead of ‘stupidity’ or ‘naivety.’ She is very kind and compassionate to

Her background living in poverty in Antigua and “In New York in the seventies, with the women’s movement and sexual revolutions in full swing, Kincaid perceives a freedom around her and in other people that encourages her to create a new identity for herself as a writer.” (Hirsch and Schweitzer 476) She changed her name and her lifestyle so she could write with that passion she uses. Her background enables her to write about deep, emotional, and, interesting topics. It’s important to understand Kincaid’s beliefs on people and individual freedom because she was upset on how things played out in Antigua, and very liberally, she wants change. In A Small Place, she says, “Isn’t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?” (Kincaid, 31) Here, it is clear that she thinks deeper than the surface. She mysteriously seems sure that the language of a criminal can only justify the criminal’s actions. This terminology is proven to be not entirely true, but it still comes to show Kincaid’s almost dark thinking patterns. It reflects her hate of certain humanities. Kincaid once said, “the magazine I wrote for all of my writing life so far was like the place in which I had grown up; it was beautiful, an ideal of some people, but it had been made vulgar and ugly by the incredibly stupid people