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The word chiasmus etymologically refers to marking with an X. In using this tool of grammar as

the frame for her characters words, Kincaid physicalizes, makes real, their relationship, which is

the negation of one. But in that negation, a relationship still exists, as evidenced by the partnered

chiasmic moments. To mark the X, something has to not be there, like the line drawn through

Mr. Potter because his fathers name did not appear on his birth certificate, like the line drawn

through Elaine because her fathers name did not appear on her birth certificate: the repetition ofhistory at its strongest and cruelest.

Elaine confidently proclaims that the line stops with her, that no one after that shall have

a line drawn through the space where the name of the father ought to be, and that through him

coming through me, everyone after that shall have a father and a mother and so will inherit

twofold the great cauldron of misery and small cup of joy that is all of life (101). The great

cauldron of misery here is reminiscent of Walcotts perpetual suffering and habitual agony. The

resemblance in language and imagery is particularly striking in light of what Rosenberg calls, the

deleterious disconnect among generations that has led Jamaica Kincaid to deny even knowing that

Caribbean writers existed (165).

The thematic likeness between Kincaids and Walcotts overwhelming misery, suffering, and

agony, conscious or not, reminds the reader of the important role site has to play in all of this. Site,

as noted by Rosenberg, highlights ones physical place within the academy (167), the intellectual

sphere where debates about Caribbean histories and identities occur; but it also refers to the

geographical site where (and why) all of this business is happening in the first place. It circles back

to the land, to the topographically repeating islands of the metaphysical archipelago. It is no great

surprise that Kincaid says in 2002 what Walcott said in 1997. And he wasnt the first to say it

either.

Throughout Mr. Potter, Kincaid uses imagery and themes that seem to be in conversation with a

number of other Caribbean writers, from Walcott to douard Glissant to Antonio Bentez-Rojo. Mr.

Potter stands with Dr. Weizenger and his wife May, surrounded by water and the silence of the

sea (for the sea is silent and only its actions elicit sounds: wails, screams, cries; and then comes

grief, remorse, despair) (12). The moment instantly calls to mind Walcotts The Sea is History,

where by the end, there was the sound / like a rumour without any echo // of History, really

beginning (Walcott 28). Nathaniel Potter, Mr. Potters father, sits in his fishing boat: at first he

was filled with a feeling of awe, of wonderment, at the perfection of the emptiness (43). This

moment conjures Glissants abyss in Poetics of Relation, its impossibility of nothing offering the

possibility of anything: This experience of the abyss can now be said to be the best element of

exchange (8). Nathanial Potter looks out at the end of the day and, unable to find himself in it,

looked into his empty fish pots and his empty fishnet and felt how indecipherable was the world,

how it could not maintain a pattern of regularityhow rain could fall beyond necessity, how thesun could shine with such ferociousness that his whole world would long for its cessation (46).

Here in this moment is Bentez-Rojos notion of Chaos in The Repeating Island: a discontinuous

conjunction (of what?): unstable condensation, turbulences, whirlpools, clumps of bubbles, frayed

seaweed, sunken galleons, crashing breakers, flying fish, seagull squawks, downpours, nighttime

phosphorescences, eddies and pools, uncertain voyages of signification (2).

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All of these words are coming from the same Creole space, the same site, but from very different

sights, different eyes and voices, in Kincaids the sound of what is not in the canon being seen and

heard loud and clear. But in her sight, what does Kincaid blur out? In her volume, what does she

hush down? The recitation of Mr. Potters life, Mr. Potter who could not read or write, comes from

his daughter Elaine who (in spite of, or perhaps because of her fathers illiteracy) can read and

write. This calls into question Kincaids sight (her point of view as an abandoned daughter) whilealso citing the historical fact that Mr. Potter, and his father before him, and other men like them,

lived in a space where they were not expected to read or write. Like Bernarb, Chamoiseau, and

Confiant express in their acknowledgment of Creoles limits to aesthetic expression, It is what it

is. Kincaid cannot, in nostalgic hindsight, place a voice where one did not previously exist: How

sad it is never to hear the sound of your own voice again and sadder still never to have had a voice

to begin with (189).

In making her history, Kincaid uses the tools she has available: her ability to read and write and the

knowledge that her father was incapable of both. In her steady repetition and revision, sweeping

overhaul of language and form, and complete breakdown of time and space, Kincaid offers a

recitation that makes no claims of superiority, one that places Mr. Potters story on the same levelas her own, on the same level of Dr. Weizenger and Nathaniel and Mr. Shoul and Elfrida and Annie

Victoria (other characters in the novel). To say his name and to imagine his life at the same time

makes him whole and complete, not singular and fragmented (193). And that is the work that

Creole, and all languages, are capable of doing: making space, making story, making history, and

all that comes with it.

WORKS CITED

Bentez-Rojo, Antonio. Introduction. In The Repeating Island. Durham: Duke University Press,

1996. 1-29. Print.

Bernarb, Jean, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphael Confiant. In Praise of Creoleness. Paris:

Gallimard, 1993. Print.

Glissant, douard. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1997. Print.

Kanning, Charlotte M., and Thomas Postlewait, eds. Representing the Past. Iowa City: University of

Iowa Press, 2010. 282-302. Print.

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Kincaid, Jamaica. Mr. Potter. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002. Print.

Parks, Suzan-Lori. The America Play and Other Works. New York: Theatre Communications Group,

Inc., 1995. 3-18. Print.

Rosenberg, Leah. "The Audacity of Faith: Creole Recitations Explained," Small Axe 15.2 35 (2011):

164-173. Web.

Thomas, J. J. "Preface." In The Theory and Practice of Creole Grammar. London: New Beacon

Books, Ltd., 1969. iii-vi. Print.

Walcott, Derek. A Letter to Chamoiseau. In What the Twilight Says: Essays. New York: Farrar,Straus and Giroux, 1998. 213-232. Print

Walcott, Derek. "The Sea Is History." In The Star-Apple Kingdom. New York: Farrar, Straus, and

Giroux, 1979. 25-28. Print.