With the publication of her novel "Annie John" in 1985, Jamaica Kincaid entered the ranks of the best novelists of her generation. Her three autobiographical novels, "Annie John," " Lucy," and "Autobiography of My Mother," and collection of short stories, "At the Bottom of the River," touch on the universal theme of coming-of-age and the female adolescent's need to sever her ties to her mother. This angst is couched in the social landscape of post-colonial Antigua, a small Caribbean island whose legacy of racism affects Kincaid's protagonists. Her fiction rewrites the history of the Caribbean from a West Indies perspective and this milieu colors the experiences of her characters. Following a biographical chapter, Paravisini-Gebert traces the development of Kincaid's craft as a writer. Each of the novels and the collection of short stories is discussed in a separate chapter that includes sections on plot, character, theme, and an alternate critical approach from which to read the novel, such as feminist. A complete primary and secondary bibliography and lists of selected reviews of Kincaid's work complete the study.