You ever read a story that feels like someone whispered it to you while pacing the room at 2 a.Now, that's the kind of static you tune into with Jamaica Kincaid what I have been doing lately. On the flip side, it's not quite a poem. It's not a novel. Which means m.? And it definitely doesn't hold your hand.
I stumbled on it years ago, half by accident, in a thin collection that looked like it shouldn't weigh much. Turns out it weighed a lot Most people skip this — try not to. Practical, not theoretical..
What Is Jamaica Kincaid What I Have Been Doing Lately
So here's the thing — what I have been doing lately is a short piece by Jamaica Kincaid, often filed under her experimental or lyric prose work. Day to day, no tidy resolution. No arc. There's no hero. Because of that, if you go looking for a plot, you won't find one. Instead, it's a rolling, breathless list of small actions and observations, told in a voice that sounds like it's talking to itself Turns out it matters..
Counterintuitive, but true.
Kincaid wrote it in the late 1980s, around the time she was publishing pieces in The New Yorker and building a reputation for sentences that refuse to behave. The short version is: it's a first-person account of nothing and everything. The speaker tells you what they've been doing — eating, sleeping, thinking, noticing, forgetting — and the repetition starts to do something weird to your brain.
And yeah — that's actually more nuanced than it sounds.
Not a Story in the Usual Sense
Most fiction wants to move. This doesn't. It loops. It circles. You get lines like "I have been eating" followed by "I have been sleeping" and then something stranger. In practice, it reads like a chant more than a narrative. That said, that's deliberate. Kincaid is pulling you out of plot-time and into body-time Nothing fancy..
Where It Usually Appears
You'll find what I have been doing lately tucked into collections like At the Bottom of the River or cited in anthologies of Caribbean women writers. Day to day, it's short enough to read in two minutes and long enough to sit with for two hours. That mismatch is part of the point.
Why It Matters / Why People Care
Why does this matter? Which means because most people skip writing like this and call it "nothing happening. " But the absence of event is the event. When you strip a text down to a person reporting their own微小 (small) functions — breathing, remembering, walking — you start to feel the weight of simply existing.
Some disagree here. Fair enough.
Kincaid is Antiguan by birth, and her work often carries the undertow of colonialism, displacement, and the quiet violence of being told your inner life doesn't count. Even so, What I have been doing lately doesn't lecture you about that. It just shows a self insisting on its own continuity. In a world that erases certain voices, the act of saying "I have been" over and over becomes a kind of protest Less friction, more output..
And honestly, this is the part most guides get wrong. Here's the thing — they treat the piece like a writing exercise. It's not. It's a survival text wearing the clothes of a diary.
How It Works (or How to Do It)
If you want to understand how the piece functions — or how Kincaid pulls it off — you have to slow down. Here's how it breaks apart The details matter here. That alone is useful..
The Repetition Engine
The most obvious mechanic is repetition. The brain expects cause and effect. That said, each clause adds a small action. The phrase "I have been" shows up like a drumbeat. Plus, that's the design. The text denies it. Think about it: you'll jump from "I have been thinking of you" to "I have been washing my hair" without transition. But the actions aren't connected by logic. You start supplying your own meaning, which is exactly what Kincaid wants That's the part that actually makes a difference..
The Shift in Scale
Early lines feel domestic. Mundane. The scale flips without warning. In real terms, then suddenly the speaker mentions something vast — a dream, a death, a country. Now, in practice, this makes the small things feel huge and the huge things feel like weather. Even so, neither one gets more attention than the other. That flattening is a quiet political move.
The Second Person Leak
Sometimes the "you" appears. Consider this: not often. But when it does, the whole texture changes. The private list becomes a letter. But or a confession. Or an accusation. Look, I'm not going to tell you which one it is — that depends on what you bring to it. On top of that, that's the genius. The text is empty enough to echo you back.
No Punctuation Safety Net
Depending on the edition, the punctuation is sparse or slippery. Sentences run. Breaks appear where you don't expect. This isn't laziness. It forces you to decide where one thought ends. You become the editor. The author steps back And it works..
Reading It Out Loud Changes Everything
Here's a tip most people miss: read it aloud. Even so, the piece was clearly built for the ear. The rhythm only shows up when your mouth is moving. Sit somewhere quiet, start with "I have been," and don't stop. By the end you'll feel like you've been hypnotized by a friend.
Common Mistakes / What Most People Get Wrong
I know it sounds simple — but it's easy to miss the fact that this isn't filler. The first mistake people make is waiting for the point. There isn't a twist. If you read it like a setup, you'll be bored by line four Easy to understand, harder to ignore..
Most guides skip this. Don't Small thing, real impact..
Another miss: assuming the speaker is Kincaid. On top of that, treating it as straight autobiography flattens the work. But the "I" in what I have been doing lately is a constructed voice. She wrote it, sure. It's closer to persona than confession That's the part that actually makes a difference..
And then there's the classroom problem. Once you file it under a term, you stop feeling it. But labeling it kills the strangeness. In practice, the short version is: don't categorize it too fast. Teachers love to assign it as an example of "stream of consciousness" and move on. Let it be awkward first.
Most guides skip this. Don't Worth keeping that in mind..
Finally, people quote the opening and ignore the middle. The list stops being cute and starts being eerie. Think about it: the middle is where it turns. Skip that part and you've read a different text Easy to understand, harder to ignore. No workaround needed..
Practical Tips / What Actually Works
If you're actually trying to engage with Jamaica Kincaid what I have been doing lately — not just nod at it in a syllabus — here's what works.
Read it twice in one sitting. First time for the surface. Which means second time with a pen. Because of that, mark every time the scale shifts. You'll see the pattern faster than any essay can show you.
Write your own version. Just "I have been ___.So no explanations. " Then read it back. Seriously. Spend ten minutes listing what you have been doing lately, Kincaid-style. No transitions. You'll understand the discipline behind the seeming looseness.
Don't over-research before reading. The text meant less after that. I made that mistake. I read three critiques first and they all told me what it meant. Go in clean.
If you're teaching it or book-clubbing it, read it aloud together. The room goes quiet in a specific way when the rhythm takes. Worth knowing if you want people to actually feel something.
And one more: pair it with her longer work like Annie John or A Small Place. Worth adding: the same obsessions show up — memory, erasure, the body under pressure — but dressed differently. Seeing the thread helps.
FAQ
Is "what I have been doing lately" a poem or a story? It's usually classified as prose poetry or lyric prose. It has line breaks and rhythm like poetry but reads as continuous text. Kincaid herself didn't care much for the labels.
Where can I read Jamaica Kincaid what I have been doing lately? It appears in At the Bottom of the River and in several anthologies of 20th-century women's writing. Your library likely has one of those.
How long is the piece? Very short. Maybe two to three printed pages depending on the edition. But it rewards multiple reads, so don't judge by length.
What's the main theme? Continuity of self, the dignity of small acts, and the pressure of being observed or erased. Different readers land on different weights Less friction, more output..
Do I need to know Caribbean history to get it? No. But if you do, the silences speak louder. It works on the surface and deeper if you bring context.
There's a reason this little text
keeps showing up in reading lists decades after it first appeared: it refuses to behave. It doesn't resolve, doesn't flatter the reader's intelligence by explaining itself, and doesn't pretend that a life can be summed up in a tidy arc. That refusal is the point Not complicated — just consistent..
What lingers after you close the book isn't a message but a texture — the sense that someone wrote honestly about the unremarkable and made it weigh something. Kincaid's "lately" isn't a period of time so much as a state of attention. She notices, and in noticing, refuses to look away or dress things up. That's harder than it reads The details matter here..
So if the piece irritates you, or bores you on the first pass, that's useful data. It means you expected literature to do something for you — comfort, clarify, conclude — and this text declined. The work isn't broken. It's just not performing the job we usually assign to writing And it works..
In the end, what I have been doing lately is less a thing to understand than a habit to borrow. Pay attention to the small. Let the weirdness stay weird. Say it plain. The rest, as Kincaid might put it, is what you have been doing lately — and that, apparently, is enough Small thing, real impact..
