The Easiest and Hardest to Read...

I must say that I am greatly enjoying A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius for what I can bring myself to read. Yes, the language is easy, and even his trains of thought are easy for me to follow. However, the subject matter is (as I'm sure it is to others) a bit too close to home. A lot of the imagery that he describes in his terms, such as the machine that "looks like an accordion, but is light blue. It is vertical and stretches and compresses, making a sucking sound." (p. 36) just reminds me of things that I myself have seen and did not know what it was. However, that's another thing that made this book so easy... there were no terms we didn't know. It wasn't written in the correct or technical terms, but rather the way one might describe what they don't know. However, that's again what makes it so difficult to read is that I recognize a lot of what he's saying, and instead applying my own unawareness to the situation. He is a lot of fun to read, but yes there have been some parts where I had to put the book down. This is funny, because the other books we've read that have had much more gruesome imagery I've been okay with... mostly because I haven't had first-hand experience with it. I know I'm not the only one, but I figured I'd share.

Kincaid & Repetition

The most noticeable writing technique Kincaid employed in Autobiography of my Mother was repetition. I think she uses this tool to really solidify the personality and aura of the main character and all the main themes of the novel (lack of love, mainly). Kincaid repeats phrases like "she did not love me" and "we were not friends" time and again, not only in different chapters and passages of the book, but numerous times within the same passage as well. Kincaid uses repetition not only with exact phrases, but with themes as well. The reader is made perfectly aware early in the story that the narrator is of a more pessimistic mind-set and that love doesn't exist in her life. We see this in the beginning with her lack of parenting and again at the end when she states that she married a man she "did not love." She viewed herself more as a generic package than an individual who could have love if she really wanted it, but perhaps never knew how to go about finding it. I think Kincaid's use of repetition proved to be an extremely strong technique that helped the themes of pity, loss, despair, anger, and isolation really bleed from the pages. Although it was certainly not an uplifting story in any way, I believe the delivery of Kincaid's message and her ultimate purpose is portrayed very strongly.

when your remembering things that havent happened yet, thats when you need to re-evaluate the validity of your 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." (214)

i believe that what we are involved in now, does heavily effect the way in which we recall the things from our past. but i'm not so sure i'd go as far as to say that it is not trust-worthy . . .
can it not be trusted because it is not the entire truth? then again, what is truth? is it just the facts, laid out in an objective fashion? or is there something other than truth, that memory fails to provide? i'm curious as to what it is about memory that influences kincaid to think that it's not a valid source of experience.

an example? ok. so i'm thinking of a memory from awhile back - my younger brother and i, no more than 5 and 6 years of age, running up a muddy slant in our backyard and then hurling ourselves down it, barefoot, while holding onto a trapeze bar. when i'm recalling this, my mind flashes images of my brother in his current state, between the images of him as a little boy. i also can't help but to think of how we would interact in that situation now, as the people we've become since then. my mind/memory creates this randomized culmination of then and now without any deliberate prompt from me, and so it is entirely unavoidable. in this way, it is the experiences of my more recent past and the present, which help me to regain my thoughts of the far past. how is that not accurate?

i dont believe my wandering thoughts of how things are now, negatively effect the validity of my muddy-trapeze-memory. if anything, i feel as though they brighten it, making it more accessible to me in this state of being, so far removed from my 6-year-old self. i trust my memory, even when it may not be comprised of the clearest images and the most defined experiences. because no matter what i recall, it came from within my mind. and i trust myself first, above anyone else.

A lack of something...

While reading Kincaid's novel I had a difficult time connecting to the story. Our discussion on Tuesday in class helped me to to better understand the concept of the text--but I still felt something was missing from my understanding of the story. While reading last night I came to realize that perhaps what it is about the text that is missing is the feeling of love. There seems to be such a separation between Xuela and everyone that is around her. The writing in the text is beautiful, but perhaps I am not able to connect/understand the text because I have never been in such a position as the author. The separation between life and death seems to define the text. But then again I have never been a slave and was able to connect to Frederick Douglas's narrative? There is a good chance this idea needs more thought..

Two pulchritudinous (favorite word) lines from the text are:
"To make someone forget another person is impossible. Someone can forget an event, someone can forget an item, but no one can ever forget someone else." p108 I thought these lines were astounding. So simply written and so honest and true.

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."