The Autobiography of My Mother

Critics

• In the Black Room of the World

  You could think of Jamaica Kincaid’s first book, At the Bottom of the River (1983), a collection of stories, as an early exhibition of the essential materials that would go into the novels that followed: Caribbean childhood, domestic activity, fascin ... (read full critics)

  nybooks published on Mon, 23 Aug 2010

2 Reviews

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  how to get your identity without any memories, without any tales, without any roots

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  ellenù said on Sep 5, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

• 本書取名自傳，却是作者採小說筆法，雜糅虛實，為自己的母親代言。Literature Online 收錄的作者評傳說Kincaid 寫的是 “ a loosely-fictionalised account of her mother's life”，又說 “Kincaid imagines what her mother's life would have been like, had she decided not to have children”，足供讀者參考。

  就作品本身來說，敘事者Xuela出生即逢喪母之痛，「無母何恃」於是成為其生命中無以彌補的殘缺： “My mothe ... (continue)

  本書取名自傳，却是作者採小說筆法，雜糅虛實，為自己的母親代言。Literature Online 收錄的作者評傳說Kincaid 寫的是 “ a loosely-fictionalised account of her mother's life”，又說 “Kincaid imagines what her mother's life would have been like, had she decided not to have children”，足供讀者參考。

  就作品本身來說，敘事者Xuela出生即逢喪母之痛，「無母何恃」於是成為其生命中無以彌補的殘缺： “My mother died at the moment I was born . . . I came to feel that for my whole life I had been standing on a precipice, that my loss had made me vulnerable, hard, and helpless” (1-2). 全書不下十處提及失恃處境，可見傷痛之深。Xuela能做的，惟有睡夢之中，企盼母親的降臨— 雖然始終盼不見母親的臉龐： “I lay down to sleep and to dream of my mother. . . . She came down the ladder again and again, over and over, just her heels and the hem of her white dress visible . . . I would have loved to see her face, but I did not long for it anymore” (31).缺乏母愛，使得她不願承擔母職，胎兒遂成性愛歡愉後最沉重的負擔，墮胎遂成她唯一的選擇（“burdens I did not want [my womb] to bear, burdens I did not want to bear, burdens that were a consequence of pleasure,” p207）。

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  南鵲 said on May 27, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

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• English Books
• Audio Cassette 5 Pages
• Edition: UNABRIDGED
• ISBN-10: 1885608098
• ISBN-13: 9781885608093
• Publisher: Airplay Audio Publishing
• Pub date: Jan 01, 1996
• Dimensions: 1161 mm x 710 mm x 258 mm Just how big is that?
• Also available as: Paperback, Hardcover, Library Binding, School & Library Binding and Others
• In other languages: other languages Livres Français, Libros en Español

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