Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt, and today I'm very happy to have with me in the studio again, Jamaica Kincaid.

Her most recent book is My Garden Book.

It's published by Faris Strauss and Cheru, and she is the author from

the beginning of at the bottom of the river, Annie John, A Small Place, Lucy, the autobiography

of my mother, my brother, and now my garden book. This show is part of Bookworm's ongoing

series, Women, Writing and the Imagination,

Conversations with Nine Prominent Women in the Arts

at the beginning of the 21st century.

But by talking about this,

it's more interesting to talk about that part of the self

that is, yes, defined as a woman, defined as a black woman, defined

as a black woman writer, but to speak about the things that are not covered by any of those definitions.

I think particularly about Coretta King, who spoke about being black and a woman all her life, and she felt

it was more difficult to be a woman. And I wondered, well, how do you tell? And how do you know

that the greatest difficulties of all are not being human?

Ha ha. I love that.

...