I have a photograph of myself when I was 2 years of age, and I don't recognize the person in the photograph. She doesn't look anything like me, and I can't find any trace of her in me physically. And yet I remember her very, very well - even her anxiety.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the disconnect between past and present selves, highlighting how our identities evolve over time.
Jamaica Kincaid's quote emphasizes the idea that our past selves can feel like strangers to us, despite our memories of them. The reference to a photograph serves as a metaphor for how we change physically, emotionally, and psychologically, prompting reflection on the continuity of self and the impact of past experiences on our present identities.
In practice
During a personal development workshop focusing on identity and growth.
Something settiled inside me, something heavy and hard. It stayed there, and i could not think of one thing to make it go away. I thought, So this must be living, this must be the beginning of the time people later refer to as 'years ago, when I was young'.
Gardeners (or just plain simple writers who write about the garden) always have something they like intensely and in particular, right at the moment you engage them in the reality of the borders they cultivate, the space in the garden they occupy at any moment, they like in particular this, or they like in particular that.
I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always writing-but in my head.
I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I'm writing for the 'New Yorker,' I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people.
I didn't think of myself as an outsider because of my race because... where I grew up I was the same race as almost everyone else... It is true that I noticed things that no one else seemed to notice. And I think only people who are outsiders do this.
I come from a little island with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. I come from, really, nowhere, and for me, the fiction and the nonfiction, creative or otherwise, all come from the same place.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
Religion must be used in furthering great works of justice and reform. It must be used to establish right relations between different groups of men, and thus to make a reality of brotherhood. It must be used to abolish poverty, the breeding ground of all misery and crime, by distributing equably among men the abundance of the soil. And it must be used to get rid of war and to establish enduring peace. Here is the supreme test of the effectiveness of religion.
Evolution does not make happiness its goal; it aims simply at evolution and nothing else.
Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.
I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.
Surfing's one of the few sports that you look ahead to see what's behind.
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