Putting Myself Together: Writing 1974–

A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE NEW STATESMAN AND THE TLS

‘Curious and idiosyncratic and enjoyable’ – Zadie Smith
‘An unaffectedly sumptuous, irresistible writer’ – Susan Sontag
‘What a writer’ – Ali Smith
‘Both a daughter of Brontë and Woolf and her own inimitable self’ – The Wall Street Journal
‘If you are new to Kincaid, I envy you’ – Jackie Kay

That’s the way I write. It’s never going to stop. And the more it makes people annoyed the more I will do it.

Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson in Antigua in 1949. She has always been herself. Her work began to be published after she moved to New York at the age of nineteen, and by 1974 she was contributing to The New Yorker’s ‘Talk of the Town’ column, where she later became a staff writer.

This is a blazing collection of essays and articles that spans more than five decades of Jamaica Kincaid’s writing. From Muhammad Ali, Diana Ross, gardening and motherhood, to colonialism and the act of writing, Putting Myself Together shows how this witty and fearless writer became one of the most remarkable and influential voices of a generation.