With these words the book begins.
How would you write your mother's autobiography? How would you make your memory? How would you build the roots of your being? This work was published in 1996, he was writing for five years, and some critics said it was not a real autobiography, as the translator Alberto Martínez de la Cuadra said, that in this book it is a monologue in the first person, a fictional character that tells us his life by ignoring the conventions of this genre literario.El context of this life is a Caribbean island that was a British colony, in which the protagonist of the colonial
His late mother was a Caribbean, a descendant of the almost disappeared people, and an ambitious greedy policeman, whose father was his mother of African origin and his father of Scottish origin, leaned on the victors. These are her peanuts genes.Tambi in her
condition as a woman and in the conditions she imposes on her. In addition, in the postcolonial situation we have just mentioned, it shows us that there are different kinds of women: “That a woman is a combination of fabricated inventions, a collection of appearances, facial and body adornments, distortions, lies and useless efforts. I was a woman, and as a woman I had a brief definition: two breasts, a small opening between my legs, a uterus.”
Gayatri Ch. This book reminds us of the text “Can the subaltern speak?” written by researcher Spivak. Because Kincaid does, it gives voice to the subaltern, to the oppressed subject that history has silenced, to tell his story. In this way, he makes reflections in the story of his life and raises questions about his situation: “And what do I ask? What questions can I ask? I have nothing. I'm not a man. What makes the world turn against me and all those who resemble me?” As
a woman, her destiny would be to find husband and have children, but he decides early that she will have no children and takes the step of getting married late. Here is what has been said about this: “The fact of wanting to marry men desperately, as I have come to know, is not a mistake for women, but just, well, what else are you left with?” Reporting her life gives life to her mother, her voice, her name and her being, she builds
a bridge between her past and her future and continues to try to illuminate her identity as she lives, “in a place full of people she could never love.”