The Autobiography of My Mother: Looking at the Past with Old Eyes.

Abstract

The Autobiography of My Mother (Kincaid 1996) is Xuela’s story. Xuela as the narrator and protagonist of the novel ‘moves between the imaginary world of the text and the real world of Kincaid’s life’ (Edwards 116-17). The Palimpsest metaphor shows to be useful to represent the ‘palimpsesting of her identity’ that Xuela does in her autobiography because the final perception of Xuela’s identity implies a selection of experiences in which the visible surface makes it possible to perceive not only the young Xuela but that who never was and the life she did not allow herself to live.

Keywords

• fictional autobiography
• trauma
• power vs love
• mother
• palimpsest