The book ends with her physically distancing herself away from all that she knows and loves by leaving home for nursing school in England. It later becomes clear that she also suffers from some kind of mental depression, which distances her from both her family and her friends. For this reason, Annie is drawn away from her best friend Gwen, while alienating herself from her mother and the other adults in her life. To Annie this girl is the meaning of freedom because she does not have to do any daily hygienic routines like the other girls.Īnnie John is then moved to a higher class because of her intelligence. She admires this girl in all aspects of her life. However, Annie later finds herself admiring and adoring a girl that she called the 'Red Girl'.

She promises Gwen that she will always love her. She then falls in love with a girl by the name of Gwen. While her mother tries to teach her to become a lady, Annie is sent to a new school where she must prove herself intellectually and make new friends. She follows her everywhere, and is shocked and hurt when she learns that she must someday live in a different house from her mother. It covers issues as diverse as mother-daughter relationships, lesbianism, racism, clinical depression, poverty, education, and the struggle between medicine based on 'scientific fact' and that based on 'native superstitious know-how'.Īnnie John, the protagonist of the book, starts out as a young girl who worships her mother. Annie John, a novel written by Jamaica Kincaid in 1985, details the growth of a girl in Antigua, an island in the Caribbean.

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid