JAMAICA KINCAID – A SUBVERSIVE FALLEN ANGEL

Resumo

Caribbean novelist Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy is an emblematic sample of the so-called post-colonial and/or diasporic literature. The markedly autobiographical narrative of Lucy, which was originally published in 1990, is based on its protagonist’s account of her adapting to life in The United States after moving from The Caribbean. In The United States the protagonist deals with a series of difficulties when trying to settle down, while she faces questions of gender, ethnicity, class, and of her own identity. It is possible to argue that in Lucy Jamaica Kincaid has made a consciously subversive attempt to associate the protagonist’s identity to that of English poet John Milton’s Lucifer, from Paradise Lost. Narrative strategies used by Kincaid in order to associate the character Lucy with Miltonian Lucifer may serve as excellent examples of the subversive use post-colonial and/or diasporic literature makes of canonical literary texts in order to discuss identitary questions.