Women's and Gender Studies Program

She grew up poor on the Caribbean island of Antigua and moved to New York alone and penniless at the age of 17. Since then, she has raised a family and become an award-winning author, yet her own success hasn’t inspired her to write happy stories.

A former staff writer for The New Yorker and author of more than 10 books, including “Autobiography of My Mother” and “A Small Place,” Kincaid has written about the ethical implications of the slave trade, the lingering effects of colonialism, the complexities of mother-daughter relationships and oppressive relationships between men and women.

“I hope I never write anything uplifting,” she quipped during the Women’s and Gender Studies Program’s Third Annual Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture on Oct. 5. “I can’t write to make people feel happy.”

In front of a standing-room-only audience in Rapaporte Treasure Hall, Kincaid read long lyrical sentences from “See Now Then,” the book she’s currently writing. The novel tells the story of the Sweets, who live in the small village of North Bennington, Vermont where Kincaid lives.

Instead of pride, the birth of the Sweets’ only son, Heracles, incites disdain in his father. In the hospital room, Mr. Sweet dwells on his son’s jaundice, his wide eyes and large clumsy hands that would never linger over a piano or hold a flute.

“What a disaster, so thought Mr. Sweet as he held his son in his arms, his hands which held his fingers,” Kincaid read in her smooth West Indies accent. “But Mr. Sweet did not throw to the ground or let fall out of his hands the young Heracles, and so their narrative continued with a bitterness from Mr. Sweet that had a taste familiar to the tongue, and with a bitterness that had a taste familiar to the ages, the ages and ages of fathers who did not love their sons.”

Kincaid also shared details about her writing and how the books she read as a child – a dictionary, an encyclopedia on the human body and the Bible – have influenced her writing process.

“After all these years, it has all the difficulties of being new,” said Kincaid, a visiting lecturer on African and African American Studies and English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. “When I write, I work out a structure – who will speak, what they will say. It’s very angular.”

The Third Annual Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture was co-sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, the Creative Writing Program and the African and Afro-American Studies Department.