SOURCE: Simmons, Diane. “At the Bottom of the River: Journey of Mourning.” In Jamaica Kincaid, pp. 73-100. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994.

In the following essay, Simmons asserts that if read together and within the context of Kincaid's other work, the stories in At the Bottom of the River “trace an emotional journey, a journey of mourning.”

The ten dreamlike stories that make up At the Bottom of the River are the most difficult of all Kincaid's works to date. Speakers go unidentified, identities merge, fantasy and reality are inseparable. Critics have wondered whether the stories are finally “too personal and too peculiar to translate into any sort of sensible communication” (E. Milton, 22). But, if taken together and read in the context of Kincaid's other work, the pieces cannot be dismissed as brilliant but indecipherable dreamscapes. Rather, the ten pieces trace an emotional journey, a journey of mourning. What...