I recently found this old interview with Jamaica Kincaid. I remember reading her classic "Annie John" in my high school library and feeling punched in the gut. I wasn't the only one, either; this was a new book, less than two years old when I read it, but the copy was already dog-eared and battered.
Famously, Kincaid had one of the more difficult mothers to come down the pike. She has struggled to deal with that tragic legacy in her work. The interviewer asks her if her mother has ever read any of her work, and she says no, probably not, "But if I were dying she would. She loves us when we are dying."
It's a two-line poem: a condensation of suffering and mystery.
