A review by barnstormingbooks
The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid

challenging slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 

Kincaid has a knack for writing really traumatic experiences and characters without wallowing, excusing or minimizing. Mother in a less skilled hand would have turned into the most horrific trauma bomb, instead it is a book about female survival. 

Told in the first person from a point where Xuela looks back unflinchingly on a long and rough life. Marked by poverty, success, sexuality, exploitation, and rejection of damaging definitions of love. The ownership of Xuela’s body, and not through the male gaze or through purely reproductive gaze is interesting and at times uncomfortable. Xuela works through a life without the love of a female or mother figure, from the death of her mother at her birth to the series of women tasked with raising her as the men (fathers, father-figures, lovers, father figures turned lovers) flit in and out of her life. Kincaid uses repetition, and straight forward repetition of single phrases throughout the text in much the same way a person would circle an idea to try and make sense of it, which feels more authentic. 

Themes of island life, colonialism, misogyny, class, colorism, and racism abound in this book. By making Xuela almost detached from passionate emotion the reader becomes immersed in the complexity of these interconnected problems. 

There are so many themes I am not touching on in this short review (including the design of the physical edition I read).