LITR 5731 Colonial-Postcolonial Literature                                      1st Research Posts 2009

Chrisoula Mouliatis

Mother-daughter, Colonizer-colonized

            Jamaica Kincaid’s works have a tendency to leave me unfulfilled as a reader because so many conflicting emotions arise. She is enjoyable to read because she offers a real and raw perspective on postcolonial living, but her style is so abrupt that I do not know whether to love or hate what she is doing. First, I must try and grasp what it is she is trying to do. Does she want her readers to learn of colonial-postcolonial life through the voice of a woman who’s experienced it all first-hand? I think that is a great way to educate Americans on the subject, but her voice is so powerful, so emotionally charged, and so filled with bitterness towards the colonizing race that it’s hard not to feel attacked while trying to appreciate her work. I love that she is strong enough to educate us of the truth: the hardships, the prejudices, and the search for identity the colonized must endure to move forward. This is what we should be learning, not the sugar-coated, brief, and idealized history of colonialism we received in grade school. I hate that she was a victim of this reality. I hate that her characters watch it all happen, but are completely helpless to its consequences. I hate that it is still so devastating to her, that the bitterness and hatred smacks us right in the face as we are reading. One element that really struck me as interesting was the relationship she creates between a mother and daughter. It is a common motif in all of her works that will not go unnoticed. This must be the reason why her narrative tone carries so much passion and emotion. I can understand how the struggling bond between mother and daughter can affect and even change a person’s life, and this is why I hope to discover the real issue at hand between Kincaid and her mother and between Kincaid’s protagonists and their mothers. Lucy, Annie John, and their criticism will help me find an answer that will justify Kincaid’s style of writing and further appreciate it as literature. I respect Jamaica Kincaid for heightening my interest in colonial-postcolonial literature, but I really want to know what motivates her to maintain that fiery attitude.

            After reading A Small Place and Lucy, we already know that Kincaid feels suppressed by European colonizers that changed the Antigua she once knew, but her novel Annie John gives us a different perspective on the colonizer-colonized relationship. The mother-figure in Kincaid’s novels always seemed to be respected (at least in the beginning) by the protagonist which is typical for mother-daughter relationships, but the tension between the females is very obvious. Kincaid admits that she “was writing about the relationship between the powerful and the powerless” and that it has “become an obsessive theme” in her novels (Lang-Peralta 12). I would characterize Kincaid as a powerful and strong woman, but I do not know if this was something she learned from her mother in admiration, or something she did in spite of her mother who forced her to become independent.

Kincaid’s strength in A Small Place comes from the resentment she carries for the colonizer. This seems to be the same resentment Kincaid feels towards her mother in her autobiography, and it is the same bitterness that shows through in Lucy and Annie John. When Kincaid discusses her mother in any text, she does not do it with the same heated tone she does to describe the colonizers which proves that the initial respect she had for her mother was present at one time or another. The change in their relationship is what hardens Kincaid and her characters towards their mother. In fact, in Kincaid’s My Brother, it is hard not “to recognize in this brief description of a mother’s love the same self-delusional justification of oppressive control employed by a colonial ruler” (Lang-Peralta 102). She tells the tale of a mother who loved and nurtured her children until they began to have their own independent thoughts. It was then that the mother revoked her affection which ultimately embittered Kincaid who once yearned for her mother’s approval.

            Furthermore, it is clear that this was a process that happened with age in Kincaid’s life. It was not something that came on abruptly. Instead, as she grew older and more educated, she grew even further apart from her mother. It is apparent in Annie John that as a child, the young heroine admired her mother as “she spent the day following [her] around and observing the way she did everything” (Kincaid 15). What Annie was admiring was her mother’s poise and control of everything in their life. Her mother even felt as if she was in control of her husband’s infidelity because she kept away the bad spirits that his mistresses sent her way. The irony here is that she does not really have control at all because in our world a woman with control does not tolerate her husband’s affairs. This could explain why her mother put up such a bold, tough exterior to all those around her, including her family, especially with her children. To her, not being in control meant not being an adequate mother-woman.

This could have a lot to do with Caribbean culture and the Obeah which gave her even more power that little Annie could not understand. Her mother takes on this god-like power where everything seems to get done her way, and because of this, a young Annie and a young Kincaid thrived on their mothers’ praise and affection. As she ages, she loses sight of her mother’s true identity because their bond is broken when a mature daughter threatens to control the fate of the family in spite of the mother. In Annie John, this distance occurs after her twelfth birthday when her mother “sends her out to learn feminine skills instead of allowing Annie to follow her around the house” (Mistron 5). The fact that Kincaid, like Annie, grew to be alienated from her mother answers our question of how that fiery emotion also grew. It is something she always recognized, and it is something that intensified with age as she searched for both acceptance and independence.

To conclude, I think Kincaid’s famous narrative style indicates a real parallel between her own life and the life she creates for her characters. There is no other way such passion could come across on paper so forceful that it is almost offensive. The mother-daughter theme that plays out in many, if not all, of her texts does not offend me because I can relate to and sympathize with the struggle. If the colonizer-colonized history depicted by Kincaid was unfamiliar to me before, it definitely is not now. Looking at colonial-postcolonial texts, one would imagine it allies closely with history, but more real and more crude than what you would find in a textbook. I like Kincaid’s spin on postcolonial literature because it affects her life personally as well. Her hatred for the colonizer is multifaceted because the colonizer appears as more than one person in her life. Her mother is not a wealthy, white, man trying to change the world she knows completely. Her mother is her blood, her ties to her native land, and her role model towards womanhood, but that relationship is shattered because Kincaid’s mother could not accept her daughter as an independent woman. Although Jamaica Kincaid has found success on her own, she has her mother to thank as an inspiration in her work. Kincaid states that her “mother would make incredibly grand gestures, but there was nothing behind them to sustain them” and she could not get past her “emotional dishonesty and blindness” (Bouson 200). At a certain age, Kincaid’s mother became noticeably if not purposefully absent from her life, and that absence has been such a void for her since then, that she has now chosen to fill it with literature that can explain their overall relationship. For that, I am thankful.

Works Cited

Bouson, J. Brooks. Jamaica Kincaid: Writing Memory, Writing Back to the
      Mother. SUNY Press, 2005.

Edwards, Justin D. Understanding Jamaica Kincaid. South Carolina: University of
      South Carolina Press, 2007.

Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John. Farrar: Straus and Giroux Paperbacks, June
      1997.

Lang-Peralta, Linda. Jamaica Kincaid and Caribbean Double Crossings.
      Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 2006.

Mistron, Deborah E. Understanding Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John. Greenwood
      Publishing Group, 1999.