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Local Literature
There are few notable authors native to the Antigua. One author, James Carlisle, also served as Governor-General of Antigua and Barbuda from 1993-2007. Jamaica Kincaid, a notable author, has published over 20 pieces of work. Kincaid is largely influenced by her life both on the island and overseas in the United States. Kincaid's work reflects the circumstances of living in a former crown colony until Independence in 1981. She was educated under British colonial education, and as such has been described as a prominent anti colonialist author. Born in 1949 and moving to the United States in 1966 at 17, Kincaid experiences of living under foreign control through, seeing Antigua’s transition to Independence and in an imperial country is expressed in some of her most notable books, Lucy and A Small Place

Jamaica Kincaid Themes of Tourism and Gender
After her first collection was published with great success in 1983, Kincaid quickly began being thought of as one of the most important fiction writers of the new decade. FFor many, Kincaid is considered to be a prominent postcolonial author, offering a novelistic approach to the history and contemporary life on the island. Many of Kincaid's books focus around themes of modernity, postmodernity, and globalization and the relationship and affects of colonialism to the "native". Literary critics have suggested her work, "A Small Place" which has been described as "postcolonial literary text about the impact of tourism in the Caribbean nation of Antigua" , focuses on the "exploitation of the Caribbean islands by colonialism and the neocolonialist abuses of the tourism industry". KKincaid's work as been associated by literary critics with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's argument that literature is an agent of change. Doing so, suggests her works aims to challenge the asymmetry is actions surrounding imperialism, colonialism, and tourism. Kincaid also largely focuses her writing on gender often alluding to a discourse of female gender and colonial relations, especially those of black women. She reveals the importance of place, time, and positionality in the representation of race, class and gender.

Writing Style
Much of Kincaid's work has been deemed autobiographical and influenced by Subaltern Studies, including "A Small Place", and "Lucy"*. It as been argued from multiple literary critics, that Kincaid uses the capacities of autobiography to express a consciousness of marginalized groups in a postcolonial setting.

Critiques
Kincaid's pointed style of writing is largely critiqued as an attack on colonialism and corruption that has been said to "back readers into the corner". Kincaid has also been critiqued for imposing mythical ideas of "noble enslavement" of Antiguans as an attempt to escape from common ideas of humanity and consequences . Kincaid constructs her texts to positions Antiguan's as powerless and thus evading their true lack of eloquence and power. For critics, both literary and postcolonial, this becomes and issue because it tends to dismiss or lessen the actions of subjects such as for example to corruption and organized crime within Antigua and Barbuda's government.

References