hind. The Autobiography of My Mother is another
text that centers on the theme of motherhood.
Kincaid’s narrators often seem alienated from
those around them, seeking both control over and
freedom from these human connections known as
relationships. Kincaid’s tight, lyrical prose guides
the reader through her tortured recollections of
her mother. Her books depict the relationships
that take on the dual gravity of mother-daughter
association as well as of the hegemonic interac-
tions between motherland/country (England) and
daughter island (Antigua). Stacking these parallel
visions on top of each other and infusing them
with her own feelings of anger and suffocation,
Kincaid draws the reader through the struggle for
personal development not only of her narrators
but also of the writer herself.
My Brother (1997) is a searing account of her
brother, Devon, who died of AIDS in 1996. The
narrative relentlessly attacks the postcolonial An-
tiguan culture that imprisoned Devon. Kincaid’s
voice reveals an alienating detachment from her
brother’s death and her former life in Antigua yet
maintains a frank recounting of family life on the
island.
All of Kincaid’s work engages in a serious
reflection on what it means to live in a world
fraught with postcolonial politics of identity and
tense intergenerational conflict implicit in the
mother-daughter relationship. Kincaid remains a
prominent figure in African-American literature,
acknowledged as a talented and unique writer.
She lives in Vermont with her husband and their
two children.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Guzzio, Tracy Church. “The Kincaid File.” Literary
Cavalcade 53, no. 5 (2001): 27.
Hill, Patricia Liggins, et al., eds. Call and Response:
The Anthology of the African American Literary
Tradition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1998.
Lichtenstein, David P. “A Brief Biography of Jamaica
Kincaid.” Caribbean Web. Available online. URL:
http://www.postcolonialweb.org/caribbean/kin-
caid/bio.html. Accessed October 17, 2006.
McLarin, Kim. “BIBR Talks with Jamaica Kincaid.”
Black Issues Book Review 4, no. 4 (2002): 34.
Smith, Ian. “Misusing Canonical Intents: Jamaica
Kincaid, Wordsworth, and Colonialism’s ‘Absent
Thing’ ” Callaloo 25, no. 3 (2002): 801–820.
Kindra BriggsKindred Octavia Butler (1979)
OCTAVIA BUTLER’s novel Kindred explores the his-
tory of slavery within the genre of science fiction.
Like TONI MORRISON’s BELOVED and SHERLEY ANNE
WILLIAMS’s DESSA ROSE, the work also belongs to
the category of the neo–slave narrative, illustrat-
ing the link between past and the present racist
attitudes in America. While Kindred might be
considered an example of “speculative” fiction, its
portrait of antebellum Maryland and the horrors
of plantation slavery are profoundly realistic.
The novel opens in the bicentennial year
(1976) in California. Dana and Kevin Franklin
are in the process of moving when suddenly Dana
is transported back in time to the 19th-century,
where she saves the life of a drowning boy named
Rufus Weylin. Rufus, the son of a slave owner, is
Dana’s white great-grandfather, who will at some
point in his future rape Dana’s great-grand-
mother, Alice, one of his slaves. Dana moves back
and forth across time periods several times in the
work, reinforcing Butler’s theme that the past and
the present are inexorably bound. In the midst
of her transportations, Dana decides to educate
Rufus about the evils of slavery, knowing that this
might prevent her own birth in the future. Despite
Rufus’s dependence on and even trust in Dana,
he develops into the violent sexist and racist that
he was destined to become. The fault lies not in
Dana’s ability as a teacher but in America’s indoc-
trination of its citizens in the ideology of white
male supremacy.
Dana’s experience presents her with a visceral
history of slavery that provides her with strength
and a renewed sense of her racial identity in ways
that are healthy and even celebratory. Her life is
endangered when Rufus threatens to rape her asKindred 303