"What I Have Been Doing Lately" does not allude to a specific time period, nor does it indicate in which nation it takes place; however, because it references "black and shiny" people in a coastal setting, it is not unlikely that this story, like most of Kincaid's work, is set in the West Indies. Moira Ferguson, in Jamaica Kincaid: Where the Land Meets the Body, narrows this estimation much further by stating that At the Bottom of the River, in which "What I Have Been Doing Lately" appears, takes place "in Antigua during the 1950s." Kincaid lived as a British colonial subject until 1966, and as the majority of her work is autobiographical, it is perhaps appropriate to contextualize her writing within the historical and cultural framework of the colonial and post-colonial world of the West Indies.

According to Islands of the Commonwealth Caribbean: A Regional Study...