Dark and Dismal "Autobiography"

I think that The Autobiography of my Mother is quite the dark and dismal book. It's message is definitely one of hopelessness. Xuela is both self-centered and loveless. The only man she admits to loving (Roland) is only discussed for about twenty pages in one chapter. She then proceeds to discuss the people in her life whom she admits that she never loved and will never love, like her father and her husband. I am beginning to wonder whether she would have loved her mother if she had lived past Xuela's birth. Is that the pivotal moment in Xuela's story, her mother's death? Could she have deeply if her mother had lived? I'm not so sure, because she discusses her mother's life in brief later on in her story. Her mother potentially lived the same loveless life. I think the last passage of the novel dictates Xuela's stance on life quite well:

"The days are long, the days are short. The nights are a blank; they harken to something, but I refuse to become familiar with it. To that period of time called day I profess an indifference; such a thing is a vanity but known only to me; all that is impersonal I have made personal. Since I do not matter, I do not long to matter, but I matter anyway. I long to meet the thing greater than I am, the thing to which I can submit. It is not a in a book of history, it is not the work or anyone whose name can pass my own lips. Death is the only reality, for it is the only certainty, inevitable to all things."

(Page 228)

Xuela returns to contradictions. Though she feels she does not matter, nor does she long to matter, that is why she does matter. She has fought against having a purpose and a passion in life (other than the love she has for herself). She longs to meet death. All of the people in her life have, by this time, passed away. She is 70-years-old and has no one left, not that she really cares. However, she learned from birth that death really is the only certainty, that is why she thinks it is the only thing that will make her submit. She never submitted to love, and therefore, I believe, never submitted to life.

The metaphor running through this last passage is one of light and dark. She says that she is indifferent toward day, which is comparable to life. She has no qualms against darkness, or the "life" that follows life. She is prepared to meet death, because it is the only thing she believes in. It is the only thing she knows will come. Not God. Not love. Not happiness.

...something? nothing? whose story?...

Something out of Nothing... out of Something

First, I noticed that it was not until we reached the chapter that begins on page 181 that we really learn much about Xuela's mother other than that she's dead. Yet, at the same time, we really don't learn anything, because it's all conjecture. Xuela tells us over and over again that she's guessing, assuming, making things up, because, as she repeats countless times, her mother died when she was born. So... in this chapter we learn something, but really we don't learn much of anything.

In the final chapter we learn a bit more about Xuela than I think we really learn before this. On page 213 Kincaid writes:
"I had been living at the end of the world for my whole life; it had been so when I was born, for my mother had died when I was born. But now, with my father dead, I was living at the brink of eternity, it was as if this quality of my life was suddenly raised from its usual self, embossed with its old meaning. The two people from whom I had come were no more. I had allowed no one to come from me. A new feeling of loneliness overcame me then; I grew agitated with a heat, then I grew still from a deep chill. I grew used to this loneliness, recognizing one day that in it were the things I had lost and the things I could have had but refused. I came to love my father, but only when he was dead, at that moment when he still looked like himself but a self that could no longer cause harm, only a still self, dead; he was like a memory, not a picture, just a memory. And yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present."

Then, a few pages later, on page 226, she says "I refused to belong to a race."

I thought that this one long passage and the other short line seemed to connect. In the long passage, Xuela explains how she comes from nothing, in a way. How she came from nothing, she produced nothing, and therefore has nothing as she ages and approaches death (does this mean she is worth nothing?). So, to me the words "I refused to belong to a race" indicated that because she refused to have parents and she refused to have children she took herself out of any heritage (biological, emotional, psychological, familial) and then kept herself separate by not perpetuating her own self, not creating a new heritage. I'm sure that the short quote also relates to the colonial story at play in this book (in her Carib mother, her Irish(?) father, her white husband)... but I was intrigued more by this other interpretation.

So, we write to become something other than what we are, according to Foucault. Kincaid wrote to become nothing (a race-less, history-less, family-less, childless, love-less, legacy-less woman), which is something other than what she is, because everyone is something (except Xuela). (That made sense, read it again.)

...searching Kincaid for thursday...

Use Foucault's statement as a lens for thinking about Kincaid's novel:
"One writes in order to become other than what one is."

Not an autobiography, huh?

So, maybe I'm an idiot and missed the whole memo on The Autobiography of my Mother not being a real autobiography. I mean, I knew from the title that it was probably going to be very Danticat-like, most of the story being told about the protagonist, who I assumed to be Jamaica Kincaid's mother. Oh, how wrong I was. I read about two pages in, and then I realized that at the beginning of the course Ann Page said we would be reading one piece of fiction, a book that was not an autobiography at all. Ah-ha! It must be this one! So, I read the copyright information and realized that there was a note from the publisher:

"This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental."

And so I decided that I would have to read The Autobiography of my Mother in a much different manner than I have been reading the other pieces we have covered in this course. All along I have been reading the autobiographical pieces and wondering to myself, how much of this is true? How many liberties has this author taken in representing and retelling his or her life's accounts? Now, as I read The Autobiography of my Mother, I ask myself some different questions. I keep trying to find evidence of why the events seem untrue, or as if they never actually occurred in a real person's life. I think I am starting to find these pieces of evidence that have really made me say to myself, "That right there is why this book is not an autobiography. That is why there is no way that Xuela could possible be real."

So, maybe some of these events, or the ideas associated with these events occurred in Jamaica Kincaid's life. More likely, they did not. This book definitely aims for the shock factor for sure. I am sure there are some events that just evoke a HOLY CRAP reaction. I was that way when I read about Xuela pulling the fetus from her sister's womb (I apologize if you haven't gotten that far yet...at least I prepared you for it). I guess I have two questions, upon all this reflection:

Could Jamaica Kincaid have masked some of these events as fiction (because I trust that some of them really are complete fiction) in order to receive that detached feeling that we get when read Danticat? And...do we read texts differently, looking for different things, depending on the genre?

Speech in fiction..

I keep noticing the number of times Kincaid writes about the theme of speech. I find it interesting that she discusses her experiences with speech so often through writing. Perhaps the character has always found it easier to express themselves through writing rather than speech? I think there is evidence to this through the character's letters to her father.
I also find the themes of love and hate throughout the novel to be very interesting. Kincaid discusses the similarities of arguably two of the strongest human emotions...

...Kincaid....

"An Autobiography of my Mother"

"Mother Dying" (3)
"And this realization of loss and gain made me look backward and forward: at my beginning was this woman whose face I had never seen, but at my end was nothing, no one between me and the black room of the world."
--self reflection, realization of the self, in relation to one's family

"Ma Eunice" (5)
"brutality is the only real inheritance and cruelty is sometimes the only thing freely given."
--product of social reconstruction

from Paul:

"Why are people prompted to write their autobiographies? Is it because they are vain and believe they have an important story that needs to be heard? In some cases I believe that this is the case but I think that in the vast majority of cases it is because the person has woken up one morning realizing that their life is finite. That one day, maybe in the very near future they will die, writing an autobiography is a way to immortalize themselves. I am sure that there are more reasons, and different ways of looking at this question. But at the heart of it I think autobiographers are just trying to preserve a part of themsleves, regardless of the reason they feel the need to do so."

we are the books we read

"a literary work is a communal act"

why?

when i first heard this, i sort of brushed it off as just another quote that was trying to get at the backbone of writing. but the more i considered it, the more it began to make sense for a number of reasons. the first one being that, our whole lives we are around other people, creating experiences and interacting with one another. the stories of these events are the basic material of our autobiography (as well as other genres of literature), and they undoubtedly include people other than ourselves. in this way, our writing would not have been possible without the effect of the community we live in. even if your a hermit and havent been in the company of others in 50 years, there would still be fundamental parts of yourself that would have come from the people you were raised by. as humans we learn everything by imitation, and so everything within you essentially comes from someone else.

not only does the society in which we live, influence the matter of our past experiences. they also help to recreate the stories of each literary work. the writer physically scribbles their intangible experiences onto a page, making it concrete between the two covers of the book. but if no ones eyes ever read over those specially arranged symbols - no ones mind ever contemplates each written word into meaning - no ones perception of 'now' is suspended so that they may listen to the 'then' . . . the writers story might have been better off free from the binds of text. without an audience or a receptive community of readers/listeners, the literary work fails to exist anywhere but between the white margins of pages never noticed.

and if no one acknowledges it, does that even exist?

"People often confuse life narrative and fiction. Typically, they call autobiographical texts 'novels' though they rarely call novels 'autobiographies.' A life narrative is not a novel, although calling life narrative 'nonfiction,' which is often done, confuses rather than resolves the issue." (Smith & Watson 7).

Autobiography of My Mother... initial observations

When I first picked up this book, I noticed two things just on quick observation. On the second page of the book (not the second page of the text... the actual second piece of paper behind the cover), there is a quote that says:
"Through subtle, poetic meditations that continually question the boundaries between solitude and family, love and hate, black and white, colonialism and the colonized, Kincaid casts a lucid wash of language over Xuela's tragically barren life." (St. Petersburg Times)
This struck me as interesting because of the phrase "solitude and family." I doubt whether any of us would have asserted that the opposite of solitude is family... but it's true. And especially poignant at a time of year when so many people gather their families together. It seems like a sad point to make, but I was somewhat taken by surprise in finding such a genuine sentiment and idea in a review of the book. I found it interesting, anyway.

Another thing that I noticed before even beginning to read was the simple, and somewhat obvious, visual clues that the book gives us. At the start of each chapter is a piece of the picture on the cover... with each chapter, more of the picture is revealed. I assumed that this meant we would learn more about Xuela's mother in each chapter. Perhaps I won't win a Nobel Prize for that astute piece of observation, but I thought it was worth noting.

And, it held true as I did read. In the first chapter we really learn very little about the mother other than that she was Carib. Not a lot to go on. But, in the second chapter we learn more. We learn that Xuela shares her mother's name: Xuela Claudette. We also learn that she was abandoned at a convent, and that the narrator's father loved her. In each chapter, we learn a little more, and maybe by the end it will add up to a whole person. I guess that's the point...

The Autobiography of my Mother

"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; on knowing this I became overwhelmed with sadness and shame and pity for myself."

The impact of family in one's own story, yet again. But, fiction this time...