The Autobiography of My Mother (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Jamaica Kincaid
- First Published: 1996
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Regional fiction
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Mothers, Parents and children, Caribbean, Colonies or colonization, Love or romance, Marriage, Dominican Republican or Dominicans
- Locales: Caribbean, Dominica
As in Jamaica Kincaid's other fiction, the themes of The Autobiography of My Mother explore what happens to a young woman who grows up in a loveless household, in this case the child of a mother who died at her birth. Intermingled with Xuela's immediate story is the story of the Caribbean island of Dominica, a land that once lived under the cold stepparent of colonial rule.
Since Xuela never knew her mother, and since her father is a distant figure in her life, her efforts to tell her mother's story require her to tell her own story, beginning with her father depositing...
[The entire page is 648 words long]
