Celebrating Black History Month: Jamaica Kincaid

Acclaimed novelist, essayist, and garden writer, Jamaica Kincaid (b. 1949) brings to garden writing her rich thinking on colonialism and race.

At only 16, Kincaid moved from Antigua to New York to be a nanny. After years of schooling, she became a staff writer for The New Yorker. Many of her columns focused on the act and power of gardening. Kincaid is also a professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University.

She approaches gardening with curiosity. Where are the plants from? What is their history and their scientific name? She writes: “Understanding
the naming of plants led me to Linnaeus and understanding the part that naming plays in possession, which led me t o Christopher Columbus and the naming of the world. Your way you possess the world is to put a name on it, and then you begin to understand it. But you begin to understand it on the terms you entered into a relationship with it – which is possession. You almost never have any respect for the thing you’ve named, that it might have something other than your use for it.”

Her writing has led many gardeners to thoughtful considerations of what their gardens mean. What do the plants and their history in your garden mean to you?