Mother-Daughter Relationships

In the works of Jamaica Kincaid she tries to rewrite the history of West Indies and in the book “The Autobiography of My Mother” she touches upon the identity problems and the topic of hybridization on the colonized territory. In the novel Kincaid uses the images of Xuela’s parents to show the image of colonizers and shows how they wanted to wipe out the identity of Xuela. The author describes the relationships between Xuela and her mother like the relationships between colonizer and colonized. Even when the period of colonialism is over, it had so great influence and results that the reminding about it still predominates in Caribbean islands. After the death of Xuela’s mother, she still has great influence on her life. It left her without any connection with the past; and like all colonized people, Xuela does not have any history.

Actually, the problem of mother-daughter relationships predominates in this novel. Further on Kincaid shows the relationships between Xuela and her surrogate mother Ma Eunice, which resemble the colonial ties as well. The thing is that Ma Eunice is a former slave and she is very violent with Xuela. Such kind of relationship is depicted in many of the novels, such as “Lucy”, “At the Bottom of the River” and “Annie John”. Kincaid says that everything in her novels is autobiographical. If in “The Autobiography of My Mother” the biological mother of Xuela is dead, it is her surrogate mother, who is the embodiment of the colonization for the girl. During the whole story Xuela tries to escape from Ma Eunice to affirm her identity. The image of Xuela is the parallel image of Kincaid herself, trying to get away from her own mother-colonizer. As a result, the reader can see, that mother is a central image of all her works.

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