The
relationship with her mother features as a recurring theme in
her work.
"I
write about my mother and her influence on her children
and on me all the time. She's dead now and I found that
even that was a source of inspiration or something.."
Jamaica Kincaid
She felt betrayed by her mother, so that even her first experience of menstruation came as a shock to her. She says that her mother had never explained to her before what was involved in becoming a woman:
"I
went to take a bath and noticed this brown rust thing
in my underwear and was terrified of it and I told my
mother and, I think she thought it was the best way to
act, she said 'oh yes that happens'. And I felt kind of
betrayed and nobody had told me that would happen to me
so young. I remember I had a lot of pain during it and
fainted and had to be sent home."
Jamaica Kincaid
Kincaid
is also aware of an ambiguity in her relationship with her mother.
Although she didn't see her mother for twenty years and hadn't
spoken to her mother for three years when she died, she is clear
that they were very much alike...
My past was my mother
