Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Autobiography of My Mother” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Autobiography of My Mother

Jamaica Kincaid

3.74 · Rating details · 3,351 ratings · 270 reviews

A seventy-year-old West Indian woman looks back over the course of her life and examines the relationships that have given meaning to her existence.

Get A Copy

Paperback, 228 pages

Published January 1st 1997 by Plume/Penguin (first published January 1st 1996)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Autobiography of My Mother, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Kaya Abaniah and the Father of the Forest by Wayne Gerard Trotman

The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid

The Caribbean 101

447 books — 114 voters

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

Caribbean/West Indian Diaspora Literature - Women (fiction)

203 books — 148 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.74 ·

Rating details

· 3,351 ratings · 270 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Autobiography of My Mother

Oct 19, 2019 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: jamaica-kincaid

Who am I?

Am I the sum of my family's biological and social imprint on myself, or am I what is left after subtracting that sum from the total of me?

Jamaica Kincaid writes a compelling autobiography of a fictitious character's mother, who died at the birth of the narrator and yet had such strong influence on her life. How do we play with the cards we are dealt? Do we even know the rules of the various card game(s) we (un)engage in? Why does it seem we always have fewer cards than we need, and no ...more

flag 46 likes · Like · see review

Jun 10, 2018 Chrissie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: feminism, audible, 2018-read, relationships, magic, philo-psychol, dominica

The lines in this book kept me thinking. Any book that does that is good. It is one to take note of.

The book is supposedly written by a seventy-year-old woman living on the island of Dominica. That is in the Caribbean. SHE is telling us about her life. Her mother, a Carib, died giving birth to her. Her father is half Scottish and half African. Her father sent her to live with his laundress, a mother of six. She was of no more value than a bundle of his dirty laundry. And yet, he did se to her ed ...more

flag 29 likes · Like · see review

Apr 09, 2008 Jessica rated it liked it

Shelves: love-and-other-indoor-sports

I am way to the left on criminal justice issues and am strongly opposed to capital punishment, but if there is one group of offenders forcing me to reconsider my commitment to the values I hold, it is probably that comprised of people who write in library books. I'd like a grant for a study researching both people who write in library books and people who engage in loud, long cellphone conversations in otherwise quiet and enclosed spaces (e.g., the bus from the Port Authority to Kingston, NY; th I am way to the left on criminal justice issues and am strongly opposed to capital punishment, but if there is one group of offenders forcing me to reconsider my commitment to the values I hold, it is probably that comprised of people who write in library books. I'd like a grant for a study researching both people who write in library books and people who engage in loud, long cellphone conversations in otherwise quiet and enclosed spaces (e.g., the bus from the Port Authority to Kingston, NY; the train from Penn Station to Philadelphia). My theory is that there's a great deal of correlation between these two behaviors, and studying the subjects who engage in them would add to the body of scientific knowledge that could be used in the future to develop a program wherein perpetrators of these acts could be grouped together and transported to an out-of-the-way location; because honestly, I really don't believe in capital punishment, but even my lefty views must admit that some citizens infringe upon the rights of the rest of us in completely unacceptable ways. Therefore, I propose mandatory relocation of library-book-writers and obnoxious-cell-phone-users to a distant and underpopulated island.

A cold and ugly island, though, not a beautiful one like Dominica, where The Autobiography of My Mother is set. Though as Jamaica Kincaid makes clear, life on a Caribbean island isn't just always a Jimmy Buffettesque lark in the sand.

I liked this book, though I'm sure not everyone would, and I managed to enjoy it despite the infuriatingly stupid underlining and marginalia of a previous NYPL patron. It's the story of a girl whose mother died giving birth to her; this motherlessness defines the main character's identity and life, which the story chronicles. Much of the novel is about colonialism, and it is very brutal and intense, with a great deal of human cruelty, sex, and masturbation. I thought it was good. It really took me into the existence of someone I couldn't relate to at all, in a way that was both interesting and satisfying, and it made me think about colonialism and power in a new way. What more do we want?

One of the things I liked a lot about this book was that it did a lot of "telling" instead of "showing." When I took fiction-writing class in college, the standard go-to criticism of pretty much anything I or anyone else wrote was, "You do too much telling; you need to do more showing!" This seems to be the infallible rule of writing workshops, that "telling" is about the worst sin one can commit and "showing" is just an absolutely great thing to do, but honestly, I've never accepted this dogma at all. What the hell is wrong with some good old telling? I like being told things sometimes. Seriously! Who decided this was such a horrible thing to do? I like telling, and I like to be told, provided it's done right. In this book, the narrator tells you all sorts of things, and it's great. It's what makes the novel work. I am sure that if Jamaica Kincaid had shared the draft of this book with a gaggle of undergraduates, they all would have been on her ass about all the telling and would have explained that she needed to show more. To which I say: screw them! All those fiction workshop kids might take a deep breath and settle down, lest I decide to expand criteria for my island.

Anyway, this book wasn't flawless or amazing, but I did enjoy it. I felt no driving passion to get through the story and wouldn't have been upset if someone had taken it away from me halfway though, but I did like reading it and don't feel that time was wasted at all. ...more

flag 25 likes · Like · see review

Mar 22, 2015 Claire rated it it was amazing

Shelves: around-the-world, fiction, favorites

Let me say from the outset, I absolutely loved this book, its language, its voice, its poetry, the complexity of its narrator, who could be so distant yet simultaneously get so under your skin. There is a raw but brutal honesty to it, that disturbs and is to be admired at the same time, it is so full of contrasts and so compelling and beats its rhythm so loud, I almost can't describe it.

In the autobiography of my mother, we encounter Xuela Claudette Richardson, who narrates her life looking back ...more

flag 16 likes · Like · see review

May 14, 2014 Althea Ann rated it liked it

A somewhat longer and more complex work than the other book I just read by Kincaid, 'Annie John.' Similarly, though, it deals with fraught and complex emotional relationships. Or lack of relationships. The narrator here is a woman, Xuela, whose mother died in childbirth; and who lets that lack define who she is as as person.

Her father is a distant and venal man, and Xuela doesn't think much of him. By necessity, she is essentially on her own. However, as the book progresses, she seeks something( ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Jan 29, 2010 Jennifer rated it it was ok

The blurb on the front of the book from Michiko Kakutani uses the words "incantatory...lyrical" which is an excellent description of Kincaid's prose style. However, the narrator's voice is so lyrical, so distant that to me the book lacked emotional intensity. Xuela, the narrator, observes her life from an emotional remove, analyzing the people around her more as representatives of colonial power relations than as real people. For me her voice was cold and gave me no sense of connection to her or ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Nov 30, 2020 AfroLit rated it really liked it

Jamaica Kincaid is a poet.

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Aug 23, 2018 Mridula rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018-reads

I was introduced to Jamaica Kincaid in university with A Small Place. I liked it. I remember being encouraged to read The Autobiography of My Mother but neglected to pick it up. Timing is likely everything as I'm not sure I would have appreciated this book back in my 20's.

I finally picked up this book last weekend and could not put it down. It is so beautifully written, each word measured and strung together with care. Kincaid writes boldly and with such intimacy that the reader feels they are ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Sep 06, 2018 Doris Jean rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: autobiography-memoir, psychology-psyche, travel-geography, history-fiction-or-fact, philosophy-time-immortality, social-political-government, ethics-morals-money

Go the page 205 and read the last chapter first, so that you can armor and shield your spirit against a bleak descent into hurt, murder, amorality, lying, poly-abortion, adultery, racism, cruelty, etc.

Uncaring evil life choices will be presented, without any regret, in a bland, mild, dispassionate manner disguised inside a pretend shell of unconcerned indifference. When you can prepare for this book, you can better understand its understated and masked onslaught of darkness and bleakness and to Go the page 205 and read the last chapter first, so that you can armor and shield your spirit against a bleak descent into hurt, murder, amorality, lying, poly-abortion, adultery, racism, cruelty, etc.

Uncaring evil life choices will be presented, without any regret, in a bland, mild, dispassionate manner disguised inside a pretend shell of unconcerned indifference. When you can prepare for this book, you can better understand its understated and masked onslaught of darkness and bleakness and total lack of love. It is hypocritical victimhood pretending to be self-reliance.

Apparently the author is telling her own story under the name of Xuela. She was an orphan “thrown to the wolves” who survived to tell us now, as an old woman, that she is a rich widow of one of the prominent white men of the country. To me, her life seems without optimism and vacant and devoid of love.

The author uses language uniquely. Because of the sadness, I would have only given one star if not for the original unique expressions. Sometimes one paragraph will last for pages. Some sentences are excellent original expressions of thought. Others are slippery and chameleon-like and wild. She inserts the same black-and-white photo (of herself?) several times at random intervals in the book and I did not know if this communicated something? The author says her book is "...person who was never allowed to be and an account of the person I did not allow myself to become.".

This "Autobiography ..." is a biography of the author Jamaica who names herself Xuela in the book and who tries at the beginning and at the ending and throughout to imagine her dead mother who died giving birth to Xuela. The author Jamaica, the subject Xuela, and the dead mother all meld together as one. This is the opposite of the multiple personalities, this is three people becoming one person.

All Xuela knows of her mother is that she was Carib. Xuela has no photos, no eyewitness descriptions, no family history, no stories, and her father never talked of her mother. Occasionally throughout the book, Xuela, from time to time, imagines how her mother might have been. So this book cannot be a biography of her mother. It is more a splotchy incomplete autobiography of Xuela. The book is mostly about Xuela, Xuela's father, and toward the end she speaks of her one and only loveless marriage for money to a married white man she seduced.

Xuela lives in Roseau, the capital city of Dominica, a Carib island. Xuela's father is mulatto with an African mother and a British (Scot) father. Xuela sees herself as a victim of the British conquerors of Dominica. Xuela sees herself as a victim of racism and nationalism explored tangentially in the character of her father. Xuela seems to despise her father along with his white British conqueror ancestry.

Xuela does not like her father at all. He is a rich, authoritative leading citizen who abandons her at birth to poverty or worse. Her wealthy father takes new-born Xuela and his week of dirty laundry to the home of Eunice, a woman (without a husband and with her own six kids) who lives in poverty. "My father was able to protect me, but he did not. I believe instead ... that he placed me in the jaws of death."

So she lives a random poverty life with various random lovers and pregnancies which are all deliberately and mercilessly aborted. Xuela minimizes these "lovers" and gives no details about them. They all seem too unimportant to mention. She loves no one, she does not know what love is. At age seventy, at the end of her book, she says she has never loved and does not know what love is. She has made a life decision never to have her own child and never to marry for love.

Later in life, Xuela does marry, once. Xuela seduces a wealthy married leading citizen, Dr. Bailey, who falls completely and truly in love with Xuela. Xuela introduces Mrs. Bailey to a pleasurable hallucinatory tea made from a weed with a beautiful, large, white flower. When Mrs. Bailey dies from the poisonous tea, the island community whispers that Xuela poisoned Mrs. Bailey. Xuela never loves, or even likes, her rich husband Dr. Bailey, she is repulsed by him. "To see him eating a meal was always a revolting spectacle to me." She aborted all their pregnancies without regret.

If you have read the last chapter first and protected yourself against this bleak, sad story you can enjoy the artistry of the author's use of language. She uses language like modern art oil painters use their paint: abstract patches of words thrown here and there. If you look for structure or plot in this book, you won't find it. You have to fill in blank holes with your own experience and guess at the words left out. Take this sentence: "Since I do not matter, I do not long to matter, but I matter anyway." What does it mean? Like modern art, look at this sentence from different angles and see if it touches you in some way. Your own conclusion is your reward. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Apr 06, 2013 K.m. rated it it was amazing

Shelves: shock-and-awe

Having read the Poisonwood Bible recently, I can't help making a comparison, and it is woefully put to shame by this. Kincaid speaks to the complexities of identity on the rift between conquering and defeated people. Able to contain the sometimes contradictory parts of herself and her history, Xuela, the protagonist, reflects on the circumstances of a life shaped by race, class and gender. She is insightful and thoughtful, and while addressing her life in post-colonial (if it really is post) cir ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

May 28, 2011 Vasha7 added it · review of another edition

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. I could not have known at the beginning of my life that this would be so; I only came to know this in the middle of my life, just at the time when I was no longer young and realized that I had less of some of the things I used to have in abundance and more of some of the things I had scarcely had at all. And this realization of loss 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. I could not have known at the beginning of my life that this would be so; I only came to know this in the middle of my life, just at the time when I was no longer young and realized that I had less of some of the things I used to have in abundance and more of some of the things I had scarcely had at all. 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. 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.

So opens The Autobiography of My Mother, a fierce, complex discourse on love and lack of love in the context of colonialism. Although this paragraph sets up many of the themes that will be developed in the course of the book, it is not to be accepted as definitive. For one thing, this is the first and only time the narrator, Xuela Claudette Richardson, will represent herself as helpless or vulnerable. It's true, there's little if anything she can do to change the circumstances of her life; but she takes complete control of the way she lives in those circumstances. And she only rarely expresses pity for herself.

I'll admit, it took me a while to warm up to this book. Xuela's voice makes no attempt to conciliate the reader. Also, many of the statements she makes clash with each other; at first these contradictions irritated me – was the author being careless? Just throwing poetic phrases together? For just one example of many, she writes "I could say [my husband] loved me if I needed to hear I was loved, but I will never say it." – but she did say so a couple pages earlier. However, I came to realize that these were deliberate choices of the author. Most often, Xuela will both speak of herself or others as not loving or incapable of love, and also speak of them loving or being in love. This destabilization throws into question, for one thing, what she even means by "love". It is not safe to assume that this is obvious, even in context.

One thing Xuela never expresses is uncertainty – even when she contradicts herself, she makes her statements with a tone of absolute authority. She is determined to control her own voice, at the end of her life as she is telling her story, just as the course of her life has been ruled by her self-possession, her fiercely independent determination to be sufficient to herself and please herself, and no-one else. This has sometimes led her to ruthlessness. She is capable of feeling sympathy for others, occasionally, but will not allow herself to do so in any way that might make her vulnerable. Consider the following paragraph (which also demonstrates the author's control of style):

My life was beyond empty. I had never had a mother, I had just recently refused to become one, and I knew than that this refusal would be complete. I would never become a mother, but that would not be the same as never bearing children. I would bear children, but I would never be a mother to them. I would bear them in abundance; they would emerge from my head, from my armpits, from between my legs; I would bear children, they would hang from me like fruit from a vine, but I would destroy them with the carelessness of a god. I would bear children in the morning, I would bathe them at noon in a water that came from myself, and I would eat them at night, swallowing them whole, all at once. They would live and then they would not live. In their day of life, I would walk them to the edge of a precipice. I would not push them over; I would not have to; the sweet voices of unusual pleasures would call to them from its bottom; they would not rest until they became one with these sounds. I would cover their bodies with diseases, embellish skins with thinly crusted sores, the sores sometimes oozing a thick pus for which they would thirst, a thirst that could never be quenched. I would condemn them to live in an empty space frozen in the same posture in which they had been born. I would throw them from a great height; every bone in their body would be broken and the bones would never be properly set, healing in the way they were broken, healing never at all. I would decorate them when they were only corpses and set each corpse in a polished wooden box, and place the polished wooden box in the earth and forget the part of the earth where I had buried the box. It is in this way that I did not become a mother; it is in this way that I bore my children.

This paragraph expresses, for one thing, all the love and sympathy she could not or would not allow herself to feel. The fates of these imaginary children are those of her real-life half-siblings; and more figuratively, her husband, who "became all the children I did not allow to be born"; she spoke of wanting to push him into an abyss, but not in anger.

The pain of the book arises from her circumstances, in Dominica, as one of the people she always calls "the defeated" – the Carib and African people. There would be a lot more to discuss about this, but I will leave it for now. She writes:

I am of the vanquished, I am of the defeated. The past is a fixed point, the future is open-ended; for me the future must remain capable of casting a light on the past such that in my defeat lies the seed of my great victory, in my defeat lies the beginning of my great revenge. My impulse is to the good, my good is to serve myself. I am not a people, I am not a nation. I only wish from time to time to make my actions be the actions of a people, to make my actions be the actions of a nation. ...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 19, 2009 sdw rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction

What does it mean when a first person story of the life of a woman, defined largely by her sexuality and her quest for identity, is entitled The Autobiography of My Mother ? What does it mean when the narrator's mother dies at the narrator's birth and can only be grasped through the narrator's imagination? What does it mean when the motherless child can not be come a mother herself, not for a lack of fertility, but instead "freeing my womb from burdens I did not want to bear . . .burdens that w ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jan 21, 2019 Samantha rated it it was amazing

The impulse to possess is alive in every heart, and some people choose vast plains, some people choose high mountains, some people choose wide seas, and some people choose husbands; I chose to possess myself. (pg 172-173)

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 22, 2020 Keeana rated it really liked it

Shelves: by-black-authors, school

What a ride.. lol this was such a good novel... the best book a lecturer have ever assigned to read

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jul 28, 2011 Hannah Grippo rated it it was amazing

I went through this book in a 12 hr day. Life story of a woman born as her mother dies. It’s black writing, so it is fierce and natural in sensations and actions, but I felt quiet content, enjoying the way the words flowed through. It’s also written by a Caribbean woman and converted Jew (talk about a minority in a minority). It is not something you can read only once. I will read it again. It’s not a plot story (there’s not even dialogue). It’s story of conception of the world and the body you ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 30, 2012 Deb rated it liked it

First let me say that I struggled with what rating to give this book and how to approach a review in general. I feel conflicted. I don’t know if I feel conflicted in regards to my view of this book or if the character and her confliction have affected me.
This book was nothing like I imagined it would be from reading the synopsis on the back of the book. The assumption is that this is a book about a woman whose mother dies giving birth to her and this is a story of her search into who this absen First let me say that I struggled with what rating to give this book and how to approach a review in general. I feel conflicted. I don’t know if I feel conflicted in regards to my view of this book or if the character and her confliction have affected me.
This book was nothing like I imagined it would be from reading the synopsis on the back of the book. The assumption is that this is a book about a woman whose mother dies giving birth to her and this is a story of her search into who this absent mother was. I felt because both of my parents fly with the angels, I might relate to a story of this type. On one hand I was able to relate in a lot of ways but then on another completely different hand I don’t know if it was the main character or the author herself, annoyed me.
In essence this was a book about a woman who’s mother did die while giving birth to her and her constant struggle to comprehend life and define her identity in the world considering this tragic beginning. The loss of a parent in general is hard but the loss of a mother to a girl/woman is devastation. I get that, completely. The author/main character has a very poetic and fluid way of expressing her feelings and telling the reader how she lives her life. Her mother never was present, her father pushes her away because he’s got his own demons and her step family hates her for what she represents. This is a woman who feels she is not loved, has never been and believes she never will be. She yearns for love so badly and seems to look for it in all the wrong places. Although, I’m sure she’d deny this observation. She claims to love herself so much since no one else does. She can’t keep her hands (or other’s hands for that matter) off of herself. She’s obsessed with it. It really seems a desperate depression tied into the absence of her mother and lack of parental love that she is missing. This distorted mentality manifesting itself into some physical need. She is a wounded woman living her life under the guise of self love. I actually found her very selfish, immature and in need of prayer and a good therapist.
This book has a lot great prose and verse that I found quotable. It reminded me a lot of something’s I’ve read by Toni Morrison or Alice Walker; spiritual, poetic, sometimes lofty. Towards the middle of the book there was an appearance of a lot of what I assume is the author’s idealism or belief system in a sprawling rambling full chapter, which I found myself scanning through. There was a lot of spiritualism that I personally didn’t agree with and didn’t enjoy. At times, the story seemed to jump around. We actually didn’t find out the town or the main characters name until into the book a good way.
All in all, I related on a certain level to the sense of loss and how it affects a life but this character went to a place that I can’t comprehend with her emptiness. It was sad but not morbid. Repetitive is a good word. It was almost as if this talented author found a way to say through 227 pages of print, in various ways, “My mother died giving birth to me, my father is self possessed, I’m hurting but I deny it, I’m empty, my guard is up and I won’t let anyone in.”
I do actually recommend it. I’m a real life observer of characters and do believe that people could relate to one thing or another or maybe all of the characters in this book. It wasn’t what I was expecting but I will say, 3 stars.
...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Aug 11, 2015 Barbara rated it really liked it

This is one of those books I am glad to have read, but I don't know that I'll read it again unless a specific reason arises. It is a very uncomfortable story. Other reviewers have given synopses, so I'll skip that part. The aspect of the book that I found most striking is the way Kincaid makes the personal-is-political trope so seamless. There are moments when, as a reader, I saw the shadow of colonialism out of the corner of my eye, as it were, while Xuela was describing some very intimate mome This is one of those books I am glad to have read, but I don't know that I'll read it again unless a specific reason arises. It is a very uncomfortable story. Other reviewers have given synopses, so I'll skip that part. The aspect of the book that I found most striking is the way Kincaid makes the personal-is-political trope so seamless. There are moments when, as a reader, I saw the shadow of colonialism out of the corner of my eye, as it were, while Xuela was describing some very intimate moment. When colonialism is the topic at hand, the cascading effect it has—the way it erodes every part of life on the island down to the most intimate, like the color of a lover's pubic hair—becomes apparent.

Xuela, the character, is not easy to like. There is nothing soft or warm about her. We as readers don't have an impulse to protect her because, as her narration makes clear, she wouldn't accept protection from anybody. She also won't accept love. Indeed, if there's a theme in this book that is stronger than the impact of colonialism, it's the idea that love is something taught, and Xuela has never been taught. I was longing for my Psychoanalytic Criticism classmates as I read this because of the ripple effect Xuela's lack of an early love object has on her whole life.

The writing is extraordinary. So many times, I wanted to pull out a specific sentence or paragraph for the application it has to contemporary life and share it on social media or buy a billboard or something. Kincaid is especially good at examining the psychological consequences of a Have-Not, like Xuela's father, becoming a Have. The acquisitiveness that westernization imparts is a unique evil, and Kincaid shows all the ways it destroys not only the people it infects but also everyone around them and the society they inhabit.

In sum, this is not a "fun" book, but it's a worthwhile one. If you are interested in the study of loneliness, it's essential reading. Good lord, that sounds depressing, but it's true. It's a quick read, and you will feel enriched for having experienced it. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Nov 22, 2015 Steph rated it it was amazing

When Meursault learns of his mother’s death in Albert Camus’ The Stranger, he is apathetic to say the least. It is this strange detachment from emotion Camus explores in his existential search of meaning and existence. Fifty-four years later Jamaica Kincaid’s Xuela is also confronted with the loss of her mother and regards it with Mersault’s similar apathetic detachment as she states:

“My mother died at the moment I was born, and so for my whole life there was nothing standing between myself and ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Aug 21, 2009 Libbyrosof rated it it was amazing

About a third of the way through this riveting, beautifully written book (what a stylist!) I began to read it as an allegory--about power, ethnicity, wealth--as well as a personal account of ethnicity and this woman's road to self-invention. Ultimately, this turns out to be how all of us construct identity, and the bogus scaffolding on which we construct it and our lineage. The book is passionate and surprising. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 10, 2014 Simone rated it it was amazing

This book is an excellent example of simple prose that is riddled with double meanings and a subversiveness of colonial impositions/power on a colonized land. It is not a simple coming-of-age novel with sexual nuances but a deeper tale of discovering an irrecoverable identity. Definitely a must read!

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 10, 2019 Nneka Onwuzurike rated it really liked it

one of the best opening pages I've ever read. gorgeous, poetic language. refreshing syntax. full of sharp insights on a young black woman's relationship to body, sex, motherhood and independence. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Nov 27, 2017 Didier Goossens rated it really liked it

Another one of the to-read-for-class-shelf; another one of those books which were just not my cup of tea.

By now, I have a pretty sound idea of what kind of literature I will gladly devour; but a psychological journey into one own's psyche, one's own history, present and future, as one grows, female and feminised, sexual and sexualised, human and dehumanised, rigged with lively commemorations of the past, of colonialism and of growing up motherless and distanced by a corrupt figure of a father; n ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 27, 2019 Nathaniel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: caribbean-lit

“I also knew the history of an array of people I would never meet. That in itself should not have kept me from knowing of them; it was only that this history of peoples that I would never meet—Romans, Gauls, Saxons, Britons, the British people—had behind it a malicious intent: to make me feel humiliated, humbled, small. Once I had identified and accepted this malice directed at me, I became fascinated with this expression of vanity: the perfume of your own name and your own deeds is intoxicating ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Oct 20, 2017 Shirley rated it liked it

Shelves: latin-and-south-america

i was typing this out to a friend on whatsapp and she said i should post this on goodreads, and she's right because i have a terrible memory, so here goes:

thoughts on jamaica kincaid: i read lucy late last year and finished autobiography of my mother last week and i enjoyed lucy more but i'm questioning if that's just because it's more relatable (it's about a young woman emigrating to america). i found autobiography of my mother was quite unpleasant; there's a lot of uncomfortable sex stuff and ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Aug 18, 2020 LauraB rated it really liked it

I really appreciated this novel and was torn between a 5-star rating and a 4-star rating. It was beautifully written. Almost a narrative poem with wisps of so many intersectional threads it made my heart hurt. Beautiful writing that would sweep me up, then land me with a THUD as the reality of otherness smacked the protagonist. The toggle between my impressions was perhaps about my sadness in reading this novel. Sadness for humanity, for the character, for her story is an account of necessary re ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 06, 2020 Alexann rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The last part dragged on a little bit too much for my liking, but overall one of the most interesting books I’ve read in uni for sure.

Kincaid’s prose is fascinating, dripping with irony, symbolism, and powerful metaphors. I have a feeling some of the quotes I’ve highlighted during my reading will stick with me. Overall, a really fascinating, but also haunting postcolonial narrative.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 04, 2020 KamariLyrikal rated it really liked it

3.5 to be exact. :)

I thought this was about her mother but it really is about HER and how the absence of her mother shaped her life. I didn't know this was her story until the end, and it was a relief for many reasons I will not name at this time. Great book. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 24, 2018 Holly added it

EXCELLENT. I must read more by Kincaid ASAP!

flag 1 like · Like · see review

May 09, 2019 Braeden rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-reads-2019

Devastating and beautiful, makes me want to read more Kincaid.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jun 20, 2020 La La rated it it was amazing

Shelves: hoopla, adult-fic, diverse-or-issue-related

4.5 the the blog.

This is an incredibly insightful story about the effects of childhood experiences on adult life and our expectations of ourselves. It also sends a powerful message about the organic grounding of the female psyche and sexuality. The historical setting of Dominica and the connected themes of culture, white entitlement, and colonialism were almost secondary to the psychological musings in this book.

I read this for the 2020 #CaribAThon read-a-thon, hosted by Runwright Reads.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Around the Year i...: The Autobiography of My Mother, by Jamaica Kinkaid	1	9	Dec 06, 2019 10:23AM
Books: Passports ...: The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid (Dominica)	2	9	Jan 20, 2013 03:37PM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Fiction

130 users

Historical > Historical Fiction

17 users

Novels

12 users

Literary Fiction

12 users

Literature > Post Colonial

12 users

Literature

12 users

Feminism

10 users

Adult

9 users

Womens

9 users

Female Authors

6 users

See top shelves…

About Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid

887 followers

Jamaica Kincaid is a novelist, gardener, and former reporter for The New Yorker Magazine. She is a Professor of Literature at Claremont-McKenna College.

Books by Jamaica Kincaid

More…

Interview with Jamaica Kincaid

The celebrated author discusses the intersection between autobiography and fiction in See Now Then, her new novel about marriage, love, and hate.

Trivia About The Autobiography...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from The Autobiography...

“No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.” — 39 likes

“I was a new person then, I knew things I had not known before, I knew things that you can know only if you have been through what I had just been through.” — 32 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid

The Autobiography of My Mother

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Jamaica Kincaid

Books by Jamaica Kincaid

Related Articles

Trivia About The Autobiography...

Quotes from The Autobiography...

See a Problem?

Preview — The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid

The Autobiography of My Mother

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Jamaica Kincaid

Books by Jamaica Kincaid

Related Articles

Trivia About The Autobiography...

Quotes from The Autobiography...

new topic
Discuss This Book