Autobiography of My Mother, Jamaica Kincaid, Very Good - eBay (item 300354916850 end time Nov-05-09 23:38:23 PST)


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Item specifics - Textbooks, Education

Author:	Jamaica Kincaid	Format:	--
Publisher:	Plume	ISBN-10:	0452274664
Edition Description:	Reprint	ISBN-13:	9780452274662
Educational Level:	--	Product Type:	--
Publication Year:	--	Subject:	--
Language:	--	Condition:	Very Good

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Detailed item info

Synopsis
Xuela, a childless Dominican woman in her 70s whose own mother died while giving birth to her, tells the story of a life filled with tragedy and small triumphs: Sent at birth to live in the home of her father's washerwoman, she moves back to her father's house after seven years and must fend off the murderous rage of her jealous stepmother. The neglect and cruelty she suffers as a child sets the pattern for her life, as Xuela treats herself and others with calculated and often cruel disregard.
Size
Length:	228 pages
Height:	8.0 in.
Width:	5.5 in.
Thickness:	0.8 in.
Weight:	7.2 oz.

Publisher's Note
Kincaid's new and long-awaited novel is a powerful and unforgettable story of loss, longing, loving, and survival that resonants with the proud insurgence of the human will. The story of Xuela, whose mother dies at the moment she is born, presents "an indeliable portrait of an angry woman" (New York Times) "most comparable, perhaps, to Camus' The Stranger" (Washington Post Book World).
Industry reviews
"This book is about Xuela--her voice and her pain. But it is also about that crucial division between the past and history, and about the rending obligation--which no writer of colony can be quite free of--to claim the first by subverting the second. Jamaica Kincaid is attempting to do just this through the voice of Xuela, and in that sense, Xuela's voice becomes the witness to that division." Voice Literary Supplement - Eavan Boland (02/19/1996) "The desolate self-sufficiency of Xuela's life is sometimes shocking. It is never oppressive. Kincaid has given her a gleaming argument. Here, taken to an extreme, is a woman's retort to sexual, racial, and historical oppression on a West Indian island, and perhaps elsewhere. It is not that the argument necessarily convinces. Kincaid does not say that Xuela is right. She says that you will not forget her. And she is right." Los Angeles Times Book Review - Richard Eder (02/14/1996) "I'm not writing for anyone at all. I'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself--so I don't end up saying peculiar things like 'I'm black and I'm proud.' I write so I don't end up as a set of slogans and cliches." New York Times - Jamaica Kincaid (01/25/1996) "Anyone who imagines that tensions between husband and wife exceed those between parent and child is not paying attention to Jamaica Kincaid." Time - John Skow (02/05/1996) "We want to like the motherless Xuela, but because she herself is so scornful of sentiment, we hold back. But as Xuela goes about living her life defiantly on her own terms as a kind of revenge against those who mistreat her and against fate's cruel trick of depriving her of a mother, we come to admire her, however grudgingly. Like Reynolds Price's 'Kate Vaiden,' Xuela becomes an unlikely heroine because of her determination to survive....In a say, Xuela Richardson has had to become her own mother, and her autobiography becomes an unforgettable account of singular survival." San Francisco Chronicle Book Review - David Wiegand (01/14/1996) "Throughout her fiction Kincaid has a gift for compression, for leaving things out, things like dialogue, for instance. But 'The Autobiography of My Mother' is a departure from her previous novels with their descriptions of a recognizable world. Although Xuela's life as she relates it can be summarized as though Kincaid had laid it out conventionally, her meditations push this story, unlike the others, into another realm altogether--a realm that is fable- or dream-like.... Her voice is not folkloric, even if some of her knowledge is peasant-derived. If anything, Kincaid's rhythms and the circularity of her thought patterns in language bring Gertrude Stein to mind. She is an eccentric and altogether impressive descendant." New York Review of Books - Darryl Pinckney (03/21/1996) "Meticulously structured chamber music in print--most comparable, perhaps, to Camus' The Stranger...Kincaid's own wealth, the dowry with which she faces the world, is a perfect prose style. It's fascinating to watch her take these several themes and elegantly, precisely, musically work them out to their inevitable conclusion." Washington Post Book World - Carolyn See

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This item is in Very Good condition.
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Product Category : Books
ISBN : 0452274664
Title : Autobiography of My Mother
Authors : Jamaica Kincaid
Binding : Paperback
Publisher : Plume
Publication Date : 1997-01-01
Pages : 240
List Price (MSRP) : 14.00
Height : 0.6300 inches
Width : 5.2900 inches
Length : 7.9600 inches
Weight : 0.4400 pounds
Keywords : British, Kincaid, Jamaica, Contemporary, Literary, All Titles, Paperback, Printed Books
Condition : Very Good

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