Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Kincaid, Jamaica - Lore Segal (review date 5 February 1996)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

Lore Segal (review date 5 February 1996)

SOURCE: “The Broken Plate of Heaven,” in The Nation, February 5, 1996, pp. 23–5.

[In the following review, Segal offers a favorable evaluation of The Autobiography of My Mother.]

The heroine of Jamaica Kincaid's new novel [The Autobiography of My Mother] is Xuela Claudette Richardson. “Xuela” is for her Carib mother, “Claudette” for “some nuns from France” who brought the mother up, “Richardson” is for the Scottish half of her father's blood and the whole, she says, is a humiliation that could intoxicate you with self-hatred.

What those nuns from France brought her mother up to be was a “long suffering, unquestioning, modest, wishing-to-die-soon person,” for she died giving Xuela birth. The father put the baby, along with his dirty washing, into the care of Ma Eunice, who was not unkind, recalls Xuela. “She treated me just the way she treated her own...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. David Nicholson (review date 3 July 1988)
   2. Louis James (essay date Winter 1988-89)
   3. Susanna Moore (review date 7 October 1990)
   4. Giovanna Covi (essay date 1990)
   5. Opal Palmer Adisa (review date February 1991)
   6. Hilton Als (review date 18 February 1991)
   7. Evelyn J. Hawthorne (review date Winter 1992)
   8. Moira Ferguson (essay date 1993)
   9. Diane Simmons (essay date Summer 1994)
   10. Keith E. Byerman (essay date February 1995)
   11. Jamaica Kincaid with Ivan Kreilkamp (interview date 1 January 1996)
   12. Richard Eder (review date 14 January 1996)
   13. Merle Rubin (review date 17 January 1996)
   14. Lore Segal (review date 5 February 1996)
   15. Johanna Keller (review date Summer 1996)
   16. Louis F. Canton (essay date Fall 1996)
   17. Edyta Oczkowicz (essay date Fall 1996)
   18. Nancy Chick (essay date September 1996)
   19. Andrea Stuart (review date 11 October 1996)
   20. Jacqueline Brice-Finch (review date Winter 1997)
   21. Gay Wachman (review date 3 November 1997)
   22. Kristen Mahlis (essay date Spring 1998)
   23. Deborah Plant (review date Fall 1999)
   24. Maxine Kumin (review date March 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Jamaica Kincaid