My ignorance was on my side. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t know what to be afraid of. I did one thing, I did another. I did what I now call crashing about. One day I started to write.

This collection of Jamaica Kincaid’s nonfiction writing, including early pieces from publications such as The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and Ms., proves what her admirers have always known: from the start, she has been a consummate stylist, and she has always been herself.

From “Jamaica Kincaid’s New York,” which narrates her move to the city from Antigua at the age of sixteen and a half, to the classic “Biography of a Dress,” her cultural criticism, and her original thinking about the meaning of the garden, Kincaid writes about the world as she finds it, imparting her own quizzical, rapier-sharp response to whatever crosses her path.

Putting Myself Together is a brilliant, trenchant, hilarious self-portrait of the artist and a testament to how this inimitable, self-created mind and spirit, endowed with wit, humor, and fearlessness, has become one of our greatest, most original writers.

BIO

Jamaica Kincaid was born in St. John’s, Antigua. Her books include At the Bottom of the River, Annie John, Lucy, The Autobiography of My Mother, My Brother, Mr. Potter, and See Now Then. She teaches at Harvard University and lives in Vermont.

REVIEWS

"Kincaid’s cutting prose shines, and the collection makes for a marvelous account of the author’s life and career. This is a triumph." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Putting Myself Together traces the shifts in Jamaica Kincaid’s preoccupations—from the intricacies of social dynamics to the verdant dynamics of a garden bed." -- Maggie Lange, W Magazine

"Kincaid is a master of literary nonfiction’s multifarious forms.” -- Walton Muyumba, The Boston Globe

[H]  Farrar, Straus & Giroux  /  August 05, 2025

1.14" H x 9.16" L x 6.33" W (1.15 lbs) 336 pages