The Autobiography of My Mother (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Jamaica Kincaid
- First Published: 1996
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: The 1920’s to the 1990’s
- Setting: Dominica, a Caribbean island
- Principal Characters: Xuela Claudette Richardson, Her father, Her stepmother, Jack LaBatte, Lise LaBatte, Philip, Roland
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age
- Locales: Caribbean
Jamaica Kincaid begins her tough, ironic, and lyrical novel by having her narrator, Xuela, a seventy-year-old resident of the Caribbean island of Dominica, announce that “My mother died at the moment I was born, and so for my whole life there was nothing standing between myself and eternity.” Such a beginning promises the reader that an examination of big themes—life, identity, meaning—will surely follow, and in this respect, The Autobiography of My Mother does not disappoint.
Beginning with the subtitle, “a novel,” appended to the title on the front cover of...
[The entire page is 2133 words long]
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