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A review by inherbooks
Autobiografia mojej matki by Jamaica Kincaid
5.0
“He wanted to tell me that we were all his; it was at that moment that I felt I did not want to belong to anyone, that since the one person I would have consented to own me had never lived to do so, I did not want to belong to anyone; I did not want anyone to belong to me.”
_______
“I had ever been sentimental. My life began with a wide panorama of possibilities: my birth itself was much like other births; I was new, the pages of my life had no writing on them, they were unsmudged, so clean, so smooth, so new. If I could have seen myself then, I could have imagined that my future would have filled volumes. Why should the world of adventure forever remain closed to me, the discovery of mountains, vast seas, miles upon miles of empty plains, the skies, the heavens, even the cruel subordination of others? Why should great acts of transgression be followed by profound redemption, a redemption of such magnitude that it had the power at once to make my own transgressions stomach-turning yet not unlike the naïve and simple actions of a child?”
_______
This is a novel written in what feels like a diary without the dated preheaders by Xuela Claudette Richardson, born to a Caribean mother and half Scottish, half Scottish father, who edescribes her loneliness turned passion, turned strength. Her mother dies at her birth and her father knows only how to love himself and his money. As a young girl, she takes the world by the reigns and creates her own path despite her stepmother who could want nothing more than Xuela to disappear, better yet die. She falls in and out of love, in and out of an affair. She pieces together her life and what her mother’s life may have looked like when she was alive. And what her own life may have looked like if she had experienced her mother’s warm embrace and for once, affection.
This is a book of life woven delicately out of poetry, prose that emanates class, poignancy and the most vivid imagery. It has an underlying theme of darkness, and I found that what I misinterpreted to be negativity at first turned out to be plain old reality to the cynic and a tad overwhelming. But that speaks to the richness of Jamaica Kincaid’s words.
_______
“I had ever been sentimental. My life began with a wide panorama of possibilities: my birth itself was much like other births; I was new, the pages of my life had no writing on them, they were unsmudged, so clean, so smooth, so new. If I could have seen myself then, I could have imagined that my future would have filled volumes. Why should the world of adventure forever remain closed to me, the discovery of mountains, vast seas, miles upon miles of empty plains, the skies, the heavens, even the cruel subordination of others? Why should great acts of transgression be followed by profound redemption, a redemption of such magnitude that it had the power at once to make my own transgressions stomach-turning yet not unlike the naïve and simple actions of a child?”
_______
This is a novel written in what feels like a diary without the dated preheaders by Xuela Claudette Richardson, born to a Caribean mother and half Scottish, half Scottish father, who edescribes her loneliness turned passion, turned strength. Her mother dies at her birth and her father knows only how to love himself and his money. As a young girl, she takes the world by the reigns and creates her own path despite her stepmother who could want nothing more than Xuela to disappear, better yet die. She falls in and out of love, in and out of an affair. She pieces together her life and what her mother’s life may have looked like when she was alive. And what her own life may have looked like if she had experienced her mother’s warm embrace and for once, affection.
This is a book of life woven delicately out of poetry, prose that emanates class, poignancy and the most vivid imagery. It has an underlying theme of darkness, and I found that what I misinterpreted to be negativity at first turned out to be plain old reality to the cynic and a tad overwhelming. But that speaks to the richness of Jamaica Kincaid’s words.