In my ever-constant desire to devour the world, I’ve decided to commit myself to reading a work from every country. I anticipate the journey to take several years as I intend to only read a couple from the list (which I’m slowly curating!) each month. I’m starting with the As.
Country: Antigua and Barbuda
Title: Mr. Potter
Author: Jamaica Kincaid
Language: English
Translator: N/A
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2002)
Elaine Potter Richardson changed her name to Jamaica Kincaid after moving to the US; when she began to write, she didn’t want the people of Antigua to know. In 2002, she published Mr. Potter, a story that breathes life into the man she never knew; a man whose absence has always defined her.
“A line runs through Mr. Potter’s very own self; I hold in my hand a document that certifies the day of his birth, the name of his mother…, and there is an empty space with a line drawn through it where the name of his father, Nathaniel Potter, ought to have been. And I hold in my hand a document that certifies the day of my own birth… and there is an empty space with a line drawn through it where the name of my father, Roderick Nathaniel Potter, ought to be…”
I’m no stranger to Jamaica Kincaid’s lush and lyrical writing – there’s a repetitiveness that builds a cadence such that it can be heard as Kincaid confronts the ghost of her father and the ghost of the island she left.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 