Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Kincaid, Jamaica - Giovanna Covi (essay date 1990)

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Giovanna Covi (essay date 1990)

SOURCE: “Jamaica Kincaid and the Resistance to Canons,” in Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature, edited by Carole Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory Fido, Africa World Press, 1990, pp. 345–54.

[In the following essay, Covi examines intersecting aspects of African-American literature, postmodernity, and autobiography in At the Bottom of the River and Annie John. Covi interprets Kincaid's themes of racial identity, alienation, and history in terms of French literary theory, but maintains that Kincaid's writing defies easy literary classification.]

Derrida in Positions¹ speaks of the necessity of ridding oneself of a metaphysical concept of history that is linear and systematic. His claim is for a new logic of repetition and trace, for a monumental, contradictory, multi-levelled history in which the différance that produces many differences is not...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. David Nicholson (review date 3 July 1988)
   2. Louis James (essay date Winter 1988-89)
   3. Susanna Moore (review date 7 October 1990)
   4. Giovanna Covi (essay date 1990)
   5. Opal Palmer Adisa (review date February 1991)
   6. Hilton Als (review date 18 February 1991)
   7. Evelyn J. Hawthorne (review date Winter 1992)
   8. Moira Ferguson (essay date 1993)
   9. Diane Simmons (essay date Summer 1994)
   10. Keith E. Byerman (essay date February 1995)
   11. Jamaica Kincaid with Ivan Kreilkamp (interview date 1 January 1996)
   12. Richard Eder (review date 14 January 1996)
   13. Merle Rubin (review date 17 January 1996)
   14. Lore Segal (review date 5 February 1996)
   15. Johanna Keller (review date Summer 1996)
   16. Louis F. Canton (essay date Fall 1996)
   17. Edyta Oczkowicz (essay date Fall 1996)
   18. Nancy Chick (essay date September 1996)
   19. Andrea Stuart (review date 11 October 1996)
   20. Jacqueline Brice-Finch (review date Winter 1997)
   21. Gay Wachman (review date 3 November 1997)
   22. Kristen Mahlis (essay date Spring 1998)
   23. Deborah Plant (review date Fall 1999)
   24. Maxine Kumin (review date March 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Jamaica Kincaid