Category: jamaica kincaid

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The “historical self” and the “self self”: Part II

In last Thursday’s post, I wrote about the “historical self” and the “self self” that Claudia Rankine references in one of the vignettes in Citizen: An American Lyric. Today, I want to finish that discussion by looking some more at Rankine’s work, Lillian Smith, and concluding with Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place.

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Why do we travel?

One of my favorite quotes comes from Mark Twain. Talking about what travel does to one’s worldview, he wrote in Innocents Abroad, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” … Read More Why do we travel?

Migration and African American Literature Syllabus

Jacob Lawrence On the Ernest J. Gaines Center’s blog, I posted two syllabi: “The Short Story and Ernest Gaines Syllabus.” and “African American Crime and Detective Fiction.”  Today, I would like to do something similar on my own blog. Instead of having the syllabus center around Gaines or detective fiction, I want to share with you a syllabus I constructed entitled “Migration and African American … Read More Migration and African American Literature Syllabus