Jamaica Kincaid’s “Blackness”

March 22, 2022Allison S Curseen25 Comments

“Blackness” is a short story written by Antiguan writer Jamaica Kincaid. The story consists of the narrator, a black woman, describing her identity in relation to a certain “blackness” that consumes her within her vivid imagination. The narrator begins to picture her daughter, a transparent figure that has dominance over Earth’s features that were previously said to have been destroyed by a band of men. Her vision of her daughter causes her to realize that “the silent voice” has conquered the blackness and made her identity whole.

The text begins and concludes by depicting the concept of “blackness” as it relates to the narrator’s identity. “Blackness” lacks a clear sequence of events as it is written from the perspective of someone’s consciousness and thoughts, having only one definite action mentioned when the narrator sits at a table. Kincaid also chooses to omit exposition of the characters-the narrator, her daughter, and the band of men-, as well as the setting. Kincaid employs repetition with the sentence structure “The blackness is not. . . though” when comparing the lack of physical existence of the blackness to its presence within the woman (362). Imagery is used throughout as her perception of herself and blackness is illustrated in connection to the earth, the narrator’s body, moments of joy, and silence. The scene of men destroying the narrator’s home and its surrounding nature seems to be an analogy to British colonizers’ destructive force and assimilation of Antiguans.

“Blackness” was a very obscure and dark story to read for me. I appreciated the author’s writing style as the narrator’s consciousness is put into blunt and toneless words. By not implying any emotion that the narrator has of her circumstances, Kincaid helps give the feeling that blackness is a hopeless given that even takes away the voice of the narrator’s opinions. The lack of emotion continues to the point when the silent voice erases blackness, with no sense of resolution as the narrator is “no longer ‘I’,” a stylistic decision that I also liked. “Sweetness” by Toni Morrison also includes the concept of blackness and its takeover of a black person’s identity. In the text, the narrator hardly views her offspring as her baby and therefore does not let her daughter call her mother. The sole characteristic of race changes how the mother sees her child.