Talk Stories

This text is a collection of Jamaica Kincaid's original writing for "The New Yorker", composed during the time when she arrived in the USA from Antigua, from 1978 to 1983. While charting the author's development as a writer, this book also features many stories from her adopted city.

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Kincaid found a unique voice, at once in sync with the quintessential elite insider's magazine, and (though unsigned) all her own - wonderingly alive to the ironies and screwball details that characterized her adopted city. She meets Miss Jamaica, visiting from Kingston, and watches Tammy Wynette autograph a copy of Lattimore's Odyssey; she learns about the worlds of publishing and partying, of fashion and popular music. Talk Stories also records Kincaid's development as a young writer - the newcomer who sensitively records her impressions here takes root to become one of our most respected authors.