Metamorphosis From Innocence Into Experience: Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John From a Postcolonial Feminist Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1602.12Keywords:
Annie John, gender discrimination, Jamaica Kincaid, patriarchy, postcolonial feminismAbstract
A passionate and outspoken advocate of female assertiveness, Antiguan-American author Jamaica Kincaid writes from her personal observations of the injustices of colonial subjugation and patriarchy. An overall reading of her fiction shows that most of her books defend oppressed and devalued women against the historical atrocities enforced by both colonial and androcentric communities. Most significantly, Kincaid’s oeuvre holds colonization liable for entrenching patriarchy in Caribbean culture. Annie John is no exception since its eponymous character, rebellious and defiant Annie, vehemently rejects the passivity and victimization assigned to Caribbean women by both white colonialists and the patriarchal society where she lives. Since its publication in a book form in the New Yorker in 1985, Annie John is often analyzed from a postcolonial perspective. However, an in-depth reading of the text shows that it intertwines gender relations, women's sustainability, and unfettered sexuality, along with colonial and postcolonial realities for non-white, non-Western women.
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