Do you have a favorite literary genre ? Oh , no , no . People writing the Bible , what genre were they writing ? Or The Iliad ? Shakespeare was a playwright , but was he a playwright when he was writing ? Or was he a writer ? Issues of genre are convenient for people who have to sell them . “ These are not beans . They are canola beans . They are red beans . They are beans from Italy .” It is true that when I ' m writing certain things , I adhere to a different morality . When I was writing a book about my brother dying of AIDS , I made sure that everything in it was factually true , because I had an obligation to him . But when I ' m writing something in which I ' m only obligated to my own sense of morality , my own understanding of certain things , then I approach the writing in a different way . I didn ' t always understand this , but I ' ve come to see that the notion of genre has been ruinous to a writer , or to literature .
MIRANDA R . BARNES
Jamaica Kincaid
Jamaica Kincaid is a Jewish Afro-Carribean author , born in Antigua . The
›› novelist , essayist , and gardener writes about colonialism , migration , mother-daughter relationships , loss , and , yes , gardening . She has published over a dozen books , notably At the Bottom of the River , Annie John , A Small Place , Lucy , and The Autobiography of My Mother . Kincaid is Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University and the recipient of numerous national and international awards , most recently The Paris Review Hadada in 2022 , their annual lifetime achievement award . Her life in America began when she was sent to New York at age 17 to work as an au pair to help support her family . Heartbroken and angry not to be attending a university , she stopped sending money home , and
108 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE Holiday 2023
ON WRITING , DAFFODILS , AND CHILDREN
“ became the best-dressed servant you ever saw .” In her early 20s , she started writing for The Village Voice , Ingenue , and The New Yorker . From her home in North Bennington , Vermont , Kincaid offers a glimpse of what we can expect when she speaks at the Authors Guild Foundation ’ s WIT Festival in Lenox , September 27 – 29 .
You wrote for The New Yorker for 20 years . How has your writing changed ? I ' ve become more revealing about my real feelings , and the language has become , in some ways , more rough . I am not as kind to myself as a writer . I used to , perhaps , protect myself from my own violent thoughts , frank thoughts . I ' m less likely to do that now .
B y L a u r a M a r s
You are an avid gardener , and gardening is the subject of several of your books . What does your garden look like today ? Last week , it looked like Greenland , just this sheet of white . Then it melted and the daffodils , Rijnveld ’ s Early Sensation , came up , a little shyly . I used to hate daffodils because we had to memorize this poem by Wordsworth , “ I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud ,” that was all about daffodils . When it occurred to me that it was not the daffodils ’ fault that I was forced to memorize a poem about them , I decided to plant the whole yard with daffodils . I started with 1,000 , and last year the total was over 22,000 . It ’ s just a sea of daffodils . I call it “ Redeeming Wordsworth .” The garden is a form of writing for me , always telling me about itself . The Twin Leaf , for example , whose proper name is Jeffersonia diphylla , was named after Thomas Jefferson by his friend who just thought it was a beautiful plant — one leaf that is separated into two , and the two halves are not identical . But it absolutely describes Jefferson and his nature . He ' s one thing , and he ' s the opposite of that , but he ' s the same person . I also grow lots of things that I would grow in the Caribbean , like cotton . I never get cotton , but it has a beautiful flower , different colors , pink and yellow . It ' s a very beautiful plant that was put to a very vicious use , and I grow it for that reason — to redeem it . So many