Reading Response and Creative Challenge: "In History" - Jamaica Kincaid

According to Jamaica Kincaid history is a collection of fact and details that are real, true, and precise. History is where everything began and it is in your past no matter what. To Kincaid, anyone can tell the story of history it just depends on where they want to begin their story and who is telling it. It does matter who is telling the story because they can choose a different story or a story that may start in a different place as the next person’s story. Landscape, naming, and history are all drawn together in some form. History describes the landscape and the area so that the reader can successfully imagine the scene or the action that is being described to them. Naming is connected to history because when a person does something of great significance, they name something after themselves or the people around them name something after that person. It keeps history alive and well when something as old and important as it was in the beginning is still around for everyone to see. It keeps history interesting when things are named as well like Christopher Columbus’s ships, The Santa Maria, The Nina, and the Pinta, instead of just the three ships. “One day, while looking at the things that laybefore me at my feet, I was having the argument with myself over the names I should use when referring to the things that lay before me at my feet. These things are plants.” Kincaid makes the point that everything has a name and it has a name for a reason. Someone named it that and that is it. Everything is connected somehow within history. History can’t be told by just one person. It is a collection of facts and details that are interpreted differently be each person. When someone hears my history and my story they may or may not be able to relate to it. Sure there is the concrete history of the world like Christopher Columbus sailing the sea in 1492 to find the New World but that history is only a portion of my history. My story is different just like the next person’s. I may not be able to compare my history and my story to theirs but I learned that everyone has a different life and comes from a different background.