Singular Beast: A Conversation with Jamaica Kincaid

This interview was conducted at Harvard University on April 10, 2007.

BUCKNER: How would you describe your work as a writer?

KINCAID: I don't know. [Laughter] I make it a point not to know too much about it. I know enough about it to correct something wrong, if I think someone is wrong about something [in relation to my work]. Though again, I don't think there is any right way to describe my work. That would be hard for me to justify, writing a correct interpretation—it just is. But I myself don't have any views on it, really. I try not to be too self-conscious. I mean, of course I have a powerful ego. I'm just as vain as the next person. I want to be the best writer in the world, to be regarded as the best writer, and so on and so on. But all that apart, I try not to think of it with any analytical point of view. People write papers all the time [about my work] and they send them to me and I read them with curiosity, but with no sense that they're right or wrong, or this or that, or that I disagree with the view or something. I have a strong desire to write. Not just a desire—it's a real part of my make-up, a real part of how I see myself. If you were to ask me to name two or three things that you'd say define you, even though I don't like to be defined, writer would be one of them. I am very much a writer, but the writing itself that I do, I try not to have any fixed view or any fixed understanding of it.

BUCKNER: Would having a fixed understanding interfere with your process as a writer?

KINCAID: I'm afraid it would. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but I'm afraid that would be true. It would interfere, it would make me self-conscious, and you know, perhaps, mistakenly manipulative of [my writing]. You know, I try not to think about it too much.

BUCKNER: What is your writing process? How do you write something?

KINCAID: I suspect everything is different. Everything I write, I don't have any set form for it. Everything sets its own rhythm, everything I am writing. What is my creative process?

Photo of Jamaica Kincaid

I'm always writing in my head, whether I am sitting down or even sleeping. I write a lot in my sleep. I often have a dream that I am reading a book that I am at the same time writing. And the frustrating part is that I won't stay asleep long enough to finish it. And the reason I can't stay asleep long enough to finish it is because I often don't know what comes next. But that would be a part of my creative process: to dream about writing. For me, the creative process is not separate from everyday. I can't separate it from everyday life. It's ongoing.

BUCKNER: So, do you type or do you write?

KINCAID: Both. I do both.

BUCKNER: Are you translating? What's happening when you're going from your brain to the paper? Is there any difference between your dream and when you are actually, consciously writing something?

KINCAID: Apart from the physical situation, not really. When I'm dreaming I'm writing, it's the same as when I'm writing.

BUCKNER: And you write those dreams down?

KINCAID: No, I don't write my dreams down. I don't write anything down until I am certain of it. The dream has to be interpreted and worked over to see if it's worth writing down. I don't write down just any little thing that comes. So even when I'm writing purposely, it takes a long time to write.

BUCKNER: I wanted to talk a little bit about your identity. I...