An Overview of "The Autobiography of My Mother"

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The novel “The Autobiography of my Mother” is exploring the events that took place in the life of a young woman, Xuela, the protagonist. She had been brought up in a household that had little or nothing to share about love in the Caribbean Island of Dominica. This happened because her mother had died during the time she was being born thus she never got the chance to know her mother. This is thus evident, “My mother died at the moment I was born, and so for my whole life there was nothing standing between myself and eternity; at my back was always a bleak, black wind” (Kincaid, Jamaica).

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On the other hand, her father had deposited her to his laundress, Ma Eunice, for care but because the laundress also had to struggle to make ends meet, she had little to offer for Xuela in her upbringing. The situation forced her to face the challenges and struggles that life presented her while growing up.

The authors reflect the themes of race, gender and class through the life of the protagonist through showing how she struggled with life for survival in the harsh environment.

It becomes evident in the novel that the concept of race coupled with ethnicity are main considerations in the process of constructing the lives of her parents. Thus she is obliged to pay attention to her mother’s Amerindian heritage and that of her father’s bi-racial background so as to have a deeper understanding of the parents as well as herself.

His father, Alfred Richardson as she came to realize had both African and Scottish blood but through social and historical circumstances she was prompted to do away with one background and embrace the other. Her mother’s race, Amerindian, became evidently vulnerable to being submerged based on the factors of power relations. As evident in the novel, “[...] he [Alfred] told me that the grapefruit was natural to the West Indies, that sometime in the seventeenth century it had mutated from the Ugli fruit on the island of Jamaica. He said this in a way that made me think he wanted the grapefruit and himself to be one” (Kincaid, Jamaica). The race of her father was regarded as one that had more influence than that of her mother’s. Thus she had to choose the superior one over the inferior in order to have a considerable identity in the society.

There are a number of social classes that appear in the novel throughout from childhood to adulthood of the protagonist. During her childhood, she had no option but to be part of a very low social life in the society. Ma Eunice, the laundress who took care of her as she realizes was of a class that did not please her thus she regarded her as not eligible to raise her to be a woman of her desire. At the time that Xuela reached a school-going age, her father took her to school and she encountered another form of class, the learned class. At the time Dominica was still under colonial rule and her teacher who had a negative attitude towards her believed that the colonized people of colour were naturally inferior to their white colonizers. The teacher thus categorized Xuela as an inferior student and even when she started to perform well the teacher mistakes her for cheating and not having the high intellectual aptitude. In her mind, Xuela saw herself as a powerful figure through her mother. Thus she rejects the opinion of colonial assessment of her people as being inferior to the whites. Upon passing through the hardship presented to her by stepmother, Xuela flees that home and embarks on leaving alone. She lands a job as an assistant to a doctor at the city of Rosea. This is an elevation of class where she hopes to find sexual and emotional fulfilment. She finally finds Roland, a man she considers to be in the same social class as her but due to the fact that Roland had the mentality of male superiority over women, the relationship breaks. The final part of the novel comes when Xuela marries a rich man, Phillip, whom she did not love. However, her marriage is seen to have elevated her to a higher social class and she was able to meet most of her needs that she has been dreaming about.

Regarding the aspect of gender in the novel, the men and women are seen to be compared and also contrasted against each other. Apparently, there is a distinct discrepancy found between the two genders where the men are found to be of more value in comparison to their counterpart women. The protagonists, therefore, get to have a firsthand experience of the of what the bias society expects of women in the society. It is evident that that by the virtue of her being a woman the society perceives her as a servant to the men or a potential baby maker. In the novel, she makes a comparison of her life with that of men especially with that of her half-brother who without a doubt is the favourite of her father as well as a stepmother. The half-brother is seen as the undisputed potential heir of the legacy of her father. The aspect of gender discrimination also is seen in her education life being among the first girls to have formal education. To her, gender was not a big issue as at some times she resorted to referring to herself as genderless in situations where she was alone. In the novel, she says “It was these clothes, the clothes of a dead man, that I wore to work each day. I cut off the two plaits of hair on my head; they fell to my feet looking like two headless serpents. I wrapped my almost hairless head in a piece of old cloth. I did not look like a man, I did not look like a woman” (Kincaid, Jamaica). These are the situations where she experienced unconscious railing against the concept of gender norm and realized that gender in society was indeed meaningless.

The novel is a typical example of differences that were regarded in aspects of society such as gender, race and class. Through the life of Xuela, these themes have been well depicted with the woman gender seen as the submissive to the male gender. The aspect of the class has shown the different social levels that come with certain privileges. The higher the class the higher the privileges and vice verse. However, the novel has shown that no condition is permanent for those who are determined to live through the harsh experiences of life.

Works cited

Kincaid, J. (1997). The Autobiography of My Mother. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Danticat, E. (1997). "Mothering as Creating in The Autobiography of My Mother." Callaloo, 20(1), 166-173.
Joseph, S. (2004). "Claiming History, Constructing Identity: Kincaid's Autobiography of My Mother." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 25(1), 39-59.
Just, R. (1997). "Home and Mothering in The Autobiography of My Mother." The Black Scholar, 27(4), 10-13.
Maxwell, A. (2003). "Searching for Identity: The Quest for Self in Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother." Caribbean Quarterly, 49(2), 46-57.
Mentz, S. R. (2001). "Of a Woman Born: Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother and the Matrilineage of Antiguan Narrative." Research in African Literatures, 32(3), 36-51.
Post, M. A. (2001). "Matricidal Strategies: Symbiotic Relationships in The Autobiography of My Mother." The Women's Review of Books, 18(5), 24-25.
Puri, S. (2001). "Cracking the Code: The Autobiography of My Mother and the Politics of Maternity." Callaloo, 24(4), 1257-1275.
Zamora, D. (1999). "Writing as Rupture: The Autobiography of My Mother and the Politics of Genre." Modern Fiction Studies, 45(4), 915-937.
Veit, S. (2007). "Revelation and Concealment: The Autobiography of My Mother and the Challenges of an Authentic Female Voice." Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 38(1), 101-115.