Hats off to Kincaid

I was introduced to Jamaica Kincaid some years ago in an English Lit course. It is interesting how over time the way you view a writer changes significantly because I remember reading a few of her short stories and not enjoying them very much but I read her essay A Small Place and found her wonderfully charming. Although her essay states "place" this is actually an essay on traveling. Normally you would read an essay about Antigua and the writer would rave on and on about how blue the ocean is and Kincaid acknowledges the banal way a traveler views his/her escape. She describes what it is like to get off the plane, how the cab driver will try to scam you (but you won't see that because you are on vacation) and the church you will visit but then she does the most ingenious thing -she tells you what Antigua is really like! That the eyes of the wanderlust are just that: lustful not able to see the truth. Kincaid's way use of the essay is profound to this fiction writer because there is pizazz and flair and goddam irony! I think that there couldn't be a more honest piece of travel writing out there. I am as critical as they come to my own writing and to others. I feel that if you are sitting down and writing something, even if just for yourself, that it should be entertaining, have a great voice, and unique. Kincaid's piece is not only unique but fun in its own depressing way. For New Year's I went to Cabo and had this very wonderful lighthearted experience but I did not think about where the people lived that gave me this experience. Her philosophy is incorporated into the essay without making it a personal piece but rather a historical one in which different classes of people cross paths and meet in the middle of paradise/shanty towns and neither one is able to see what the other does. When I think of my impending travel/place essay a sense of doom overcomes me. Why? I am happy to tell you -because writing non-fiction, whether a school essay or a creative piece, makes me beyond nervous. This type of writing is out of my element. When I submit a short story to workshop I am proud, generally elated and I receive a rather pleasant response. When I submit an essay in non-fiction I feel that I am a phony! Uncomfortable with the voice! Wanna throw it out! This blog is no different. However, Ms. Kincaid's essay showed me that an essay that I am dreading because of the confinements of the assignment and because it is an essay (let us not forget) does not have to be feared. My essay does not have to be of the drab sort of a vision of traveling that most people expect. I may write an essay about a visit Lancaster, PA land of the Amish, and what I think that they might feel. Let me clarify, I am not saying that I would dare understand the way the Amish feel nor would I make it personal but in the way that Kincaid is able to frame her essay in such a way that she is not the center focus but is very much the voice of the essay. In my head a journalistic approach was going to have to be the way to go but a ha! I have seen that is just not the case. The Amish will probably not be the subject of my next essay but maybe they will. What I do know is that I won't write if I don't think it is a quarter as eloquently composed as Kincaid's. Not perfection but something admirable, something I am comfortable with and I believe that Kincaid has succeeded in showing this writer a new way to look at something.