Hail King Kincaid, for he is fierce, uncompromising, honest and brave. Jamaica Kincaid spends much of his time dispensing what one critic so accurately expressed: horrible truths; truths that people spend a lot of time trying not to recognize. Understanding this Jamaica Kincaid takes us on a journey of discovery. We did not intend to move on nor did we want to, but once there we get to know the landscape. Although we have never been there before; however, our existence now depended on our familiarity with that scene then.
In “The Autobiography of My Mother” Jamaica Kincaid has us on this path. Oddly enough, Jamaica Kincaid’s autobiography of his mother is similar to the autobiography of my mother, your mother, our mothers, past mothers and future mothers. Because, by revealing Xuela’s story that begins with the death of her mother. The story of Jamaica Kincaid is the story of his mother. The history of Kincaid’s mother as Lamarckism or osmosis is revealed in Kincaid’s amniotic fluid, as the colonial history of her beloved island is exposed to Jamaica Kincaid in a foreign land. Xuela did not have to live on that small island or meet her mother. They are consequences of your education. Like genetic evolution or ideology repeated over and over again; his identity his island pride revealed in another country; a set of contradictions and ambivalence that come to define, or alter, our lives.
But what is horrible about that? Well this is the exciting part. Kincaid is sexual, very sexual without apology or shame. A lot, because sexuality has a lot of contradiction, intruders, shame and guilt. They appear in all sexual matters determined to define us. Their presences are Kincaid’s nemesis. There to be conquered with the sexual enhancer of Kincaid. Shame and guilt make their appearance in “Niña” for criticizing the pre-adolescent daughter for squeezing bread. And for being the type of person for whom the baker will not let squeeze the merchandise. Criticized for playing marble in a skirt. Criticized for the way Xuela wears Lucy’s hair or smells.
Kincaid’s mother likes that the morality of her island is there to involve her. And if you pay attention, they will reveal horrible truths. Not only in your life but in your mother’s. As tireless as he may be, Kincaid shows a need for love with his willingness to compromise. This search for love will finally define her. Like his little island. And his dead mother. Available only in the arms of someone else’s husband to be conquered. Or in a land and foreign symbols: the white man, the white lady; also to be captured by this woman who arrived in a banana boat.
Xuela Claudette Richardson, our protagonist, is sensual like Kincaid. She revels in the exposed sexuality in her unloved life. What Xuela is looking for in her sexuality is the feeling she lacks. A nemesis, not a lover. She is looking for someone to love or hate; His sexuality as the Phoenix rises from the ashes of his mother, like all of us. Kincaid “accepts that we live in incredible contradictions and ambivalences.” Xuela feels alone without her mother and father. And replace that loneliness with a sexual appetite. You are hungry, but you are aware of your hunger. And she takes control. She is not overwhelmed by sex; she embraces sex as a friend, a partner whose company she enjoys, a whore as “mother as daughter.” Like the death of her mother, she accepts sex, it is natural.
And control Xuela. She describes her lover: “He was like most men I know, obsessed with an activity he wasn’t very good at …” Xuela doesn’t need sex, the activity. She needs sex, the feeling; a feeling out of place amid contradictions and disappointments: his mother. With sex, Kincaid is a conqueror. Why did mom have to die? But her mother is alive, alive in her, revealing herself in the victims of Xuela’s life.
Because Xuela “a long time ago that I had come to recognize this as perhaps an incessant part of my way of being and that is why I looked for a man who could alleviate this feeling.” Kincaid tells us this story, as she is about to untangle her chest with her spiky, fruity purple nipples that she writes are in a constant state of sensation. Xuela needs a man to suck on her nipples to ease her irritability. Kincaid is taking control by conquering like his mother.
While Xuela was alone caressing herself. On purpose, she caught her hands in the hair between her legs. She remembers a man. The man she knew, a man she dreamed of, a man far away, a man she wanted on top of her. He is not the man on top, because he is not at all the person she dreamed of being on top of her. Because that dream belongs to another woman’s husband. And it made sense that she wanted this other woman’s husband, even though he’s benign, maybe he’s a conquest. And Xuela as Kincaid is a conqueror.
Emotionally and physically, Xuela is on the attack. His little island, colonized by Great Britain. Protected against innuendo from uncivilized creatures only suitable for banana production. The colonizers represented metaphorically with a white skin wrapped in English culture will be defeated. Kincaid rages against the colonial spirit, “a spirit that lives in hierarchies of skin color. Moira, his lover’s wife, came to symbolize the epitome of colonial culture. She was delighted to belong to the English people. It is where she extracted her sense of identity full of charitable sympathies for others with contradictions, and many complaints.
As the provincial West Indies counterpart to Kincaid. The Jamaican dancehall queen, the one called Lady Saw and brags: “I have your man, and you can’t do anything about it / You may think he will come back to you, but … I doubt it / I don’t make sense”, you even call to Ur Man, try to solve it / because I have your man, and you can’t do anything about it. “Kincaid, however, is worldly and brutal with her attacks, even deadly. In describing Moira, Kincaid gives a precise explanation of the vain altruism of colonialism. Ella Moira, a lady “a combination of elaborate fabrications, a collection of external facial arrangements and body parts, distortions, lies and empty efforts.” Moira is far above the common woman who moans during sex and growls when excreting. Little lady Xuela is a woman, common and indistinguishable from the others. Lady Moira, far from sympathizing with others, is a contradiction and ambivalence of self-hatred, dehumanization and false sympathies, a liar to herself.
Blunt, brutal and cheeky is Kincaid, and wow Selfish, at least with its protagonist Xuela. Describing her sex with Phillip. At that moment, she began to fade, and she was not a prisoner of those primitive and essential feelings, orgasm and sex. At the moment when Phillip was toning down his pudenda. Her mind asks Roland for a new source of pleasure: Wow! Kincaid’s honesty isn’t that human. And one of those horrible truths, well, genuinely human truths. Once again, Kincaid hints at his mother’s influence in dealing with the joys in his life. Because he, Ronald, was a married stevedore, the same class of men as his father; He too will be symbolically conquered.
Not that conquering is easy. For him to be conquered, she first loves sincerely, sincerely. For Ronald it serves as an essential emotional symbol. Xuela, aware of the consequences, affirms: “who would betray whom, who would have a captive, who would be a captor, who would give and who would take, what would I do”. And what he does is take no prisoners, brutality, honestly: “because I couldn’t have loved Ronald like I did if he hadn’t loved other women.” She said this after Ronald’s wife slapped her on the head, hard! To which Xuela replied without bitterness: “I consider it inferior to me to fight for a man.”
And in the middle of a “fight”, Xuela gives perspective. While renting her clothes, her mind is on the sensation of Phillip sucking on her nipples. Stimulating his chest, splitting in two. Because Xuela couldn’t decide which feeling she wanted to dominate over the other. A sinus in Phillip’s mouth or the sensation of saliva evaporating in the one that just came out of his mouth. In the middle of a fight! With a heavy-handed married West Indian woman who is determined to support her man. Even producing a list of names, of another woman he had presumably slapped. The fearless Xuela declares that she possesses herself. Phillip will be another on your list; and that his wife’s anger, like his best Sunday, and intentions are misplaced.
Once again, Kincaid is right. Like Phillip’s wife, we are wrong. Whose ambivalence she sees her conquering a husband fighting for a man. A man, a misdirected symbol of his fear. Lost and found in “The autobiography of my mother”, her mother. Xuela is right, of course. It is you who you have to possess. The people we meet are there to help us navigate this unfamiliar terrain now. So familiar to us. As angry lovers, they reveal nothing because they too are on the same quest to discover their mothers in their autobiography, sometimes loving her, sometimes hating to tell the terrible truth.
