“Blackness” means a lot to Jamaica Kincaid

Allison S Curseen90 Comments

From the prose “Blackness” written by Jamaica Kincaid, The author talks about her understanding and her relationship with blackness. It is not only the main idea of the prose, but it also has many different layers and meanings to it. One formal element(paragraph) from the text that stands out to me the most is the penultimate paragraph in this prose. The author says, “Look at my child as she stands boldly now, one foot in the dark, the other in the light. Moving from pool to pool, she absorbs each special sensation for and of itself. My child rushes from death to death, so familiar a state is it to her.”


In my opinion, the author uses onomatopoeia and parallelism in this paragraph to express the strong emotions she has toward her child.


In the first sentence of the paragraph, she started it with “Oh”. It shows that she wants the audience to know that she is writing this paragraph with some strong feelings. Because there are many ways to convey her words without using any onomatopoeia. After that, the author uses a few parallel sentences, such as “moving from pool to pool, rushes from death to death.” Personally, I don’t understand what she means when she says death to death, but I think when she says “moving from pool to pool”, she means shifting from different cultures. Being a person who is intertwined between two cultures has been the major struggle throughout her life. Her daughter goes through a very similar situation as well, especially because her daughter is half black half white. However, she comes to a realization that she doesn’t necessarily have to choose a culture, neither does her daughter. They can be a part of both cultures instead, just like when she says, “Oh look at my child as she stands boldly now, one foot in the dark, the other in the light. Moving from pool to pool”(moving from culture to culture). She can proudly be a part of both cultures as she absorbs each special sensation for and of itself. Therefore, she intends to show a lot of emotions in this paragraph in order to let her audience feel her pride.

90 Comments

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