Xuela's Character in Jamaica Kincaid's Autobiography of My Mother

Being that she was adopted, she has no relation to her Chinese culture, yet still wants to belong to it. I feel she is judged because she lacks connection with her culture, and that is why she has this sense of determination to learn more

In her address, she used pathos to grab the attention of the audience, by talking about happiness being achieved only by doing things that benefited others and that enslaving another is no different from dehumanizing them. The structure of her address shows the passion she had for the freedom of her people as well as the urge to unite women to join her cause. In her essay, she wants to inspire women to connect their maternal instincts to the abolitionist movement and give sympathy to the slaves as if they were their own flesh and blood.

Adichie’s characters are subject to cultural suppression in several of the short stories. This is most pronounced in ‘The Arrangers of Marriage’ where Chinaza is forced by her husband to assimilate to her new surroundings by ridding herself of all signs of being Nigerian,

This autobiography is about a young girl named Frado, who was born free but when her mother Mag and step-father Seth abandoned her, she was forced into being an indentured servant for the family she was left with. Mag was a white woman who became an outcast after she bore a child out of wed-lock. The child only live but a few short weeks before she passed away; Mag found it to be a blessing for the child couldn’t be taunted for her mother’s mistake. After leaving the town that looked down upon her, she met and befriended a black man named Jim, he later convinced her to marry him, which in this 19th century society put her even lower on the totem-poll. Together they had two beautiful mulatto children, Frado and a son whose name was never mentioned in the book. After a couple of years of being

The envelopment of poor relationships in one’s earlier life often directs a person towards negative actions and shape his/her personality for the worst. Eldin is a prime example of a person who struggles and allows his past actions to determine his destiny. After her husband passed away in the war, Eldin’s mother

(176). It becomes apparent that Armand?s actions and words greatly affect Desiree when she says, ?My mother, they tell me I am not white? (176). Desiree?s powerless situation can in many ways be blamed for her unresolved uncertainty about her racial identity.

Chapter one titled, “No Name Woman”, is an example of the narrator referring to her mother’s talk-stories and a prominent illustration of incorporating the past into the present. This talk- story is culturally based to express information about the past. In “No Name Women”, the narrator explains that her mother, Brave Orchid, would use the stories to give lessons on life that would stick with her children. She represents a bridge figure with one foot in the past, her Chinese culture that she relays on to the family and one foot in the present, her assimilation to American life. The bridge that Brave Orchid acts as brings together the two cultures and allows her to incorporate the family’s Chinese history into their present

The mother begins to rebel against tradition by taking an active role in educating and freeing herself. Through her radio, telephone and trips out with her sons she develops her own opinions about the world, the war, and the domination and seclusion of woman. She loses her innocence as a result to her new knowledge and experience.

Maxine Hong Kingston once said, “I 've been writing since I was 7, but before that, I was orally making stories. This quote expresses Kingston’s fervor for writing and storytelling outside of her short story “White Tigers from the Woman Warrior”, which emphasizes the importance of literature, which is her art, by retelling her own childhood as the “fairy tale” of the Woman Warrior, Fa Mu Lan, and connecting it back to her own life. The introductory paragraphs, coupled with the word carving scene and the concluding final paragraphs, evoke Fa Mu Lan and present Maxine’s life as analogous to Fa Mu Lan’s life story. While it is understood that they did not know each other, Maxine complicates this “relationship”, for lack of a better word, by using a first-person narrative as opposed to a third-person narrative while retelling the “fairy tale”, which in turn complicates subjectivity of Maxine, and the relationship between Maxine and Fa Mu Lan. Moreover, the words in the word carving scene in the middle of the “fairy tale” are double symbols of suffering and of perfect filiality, which is a trait common in Chinese culture. By and large, these early on passages, and each section from there on, and the word cutting scene, utilize the literary devices of point of view and central symbol to influence the audience to acknowledge Maxine 's claim that Fa Mu Lan is her model, and that she, Maxine, is fruitful in taking after her case since they both have words "at their backs."

Looking at the female slave as a mother, we find that she fetishizes her relationship with her child. Fueling her state of distortion further, we suggest that the mother believes her infant son’s existence is another mistakes. Boldly, the mother takes on the unprecedented role of God and makes a multitude of distasteful decisions about her infant son. Like deeming his fair skin unbearable, predicting that as an adult he will claim a “master-right” over black slaves, and finally ending his life. By all accounts, the mother is unable to make sensible decisions about anything.

She considers that “some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil.” (Kingston 6). Kingston writes her initial version of the “No Name Woman,” who was raped, raided, and died an outcast, but Kingston determines that this telling does not fit her understanding of China. Therefore, Kingston entertains another hypothetical, that her aunt took a lover and saved him from shame by giving “silent birth” and not revealing the lover’s identity (Kingston 11). Here, Kingston critically examines the inherited talk-story of her mother to determine the meaning she should obtain from the death of her aunt. Her mother’s conclusion is that she must not become pregnant, but Kingston is uncertain about the simplicity of her mother’s story. In the “No Name Woman,” Kingston introduces the fictitious memoir structure that she utilizes through the variety of interpretations of her aunt’s story. Consistently through the memoir, Kingston writes contrasting accounts of the same stories and imagines the stories of others to further her themes about silence, authenticity, and identity formation.

Jacobs autobiography which is known by the name of ‘Incidents in a Life of a Slave Girl’ gave a true account of the treatment that black women faced during that time and also throwing some light on a perception which has been kept in shadows from the society. While writing the story of her life, Jacobs though focused on her defeat due to obstacles like race and gender, gave voice to something which was hidden from society regardless of the presence of patriarchal society of the nineteenth century.

As cultural critic Edward Said once wrote, “[Exile’s] essential sadness can never be surmounted.” Mariam, the daughter of an affair between a wealthy businessman and a lowly servant, is exiled from her home of fifteen years into a marriage with someone who she has never met. She is left heartbroken, melancholic, and feeling alienated. Before her forced marriage, Mariam is huddled into her father’s house where she spends a few weeks coping with her mother’s death. The narrator describes the events leading up to her temporary residency with her father Jalil, “Two days before, Mariam has slept on the sidewalk waiting for him. Two days before--when

Life is a complete and utter mystery to Xuela, which is bothersome to one who has been able to decipher most things with relative ease. “It is sad that unless you are born a god, your life, from its very beginning, is a mystery to you…Who you are is a mystery no one can answer, not even you. And why not, why not!” ( pg 202). Both Xuela and Kant seem to hold this belief in common: it takes god-like knowledge i.e omniscience to be able to completely comprehend one’s life and therefore fathom how to obtain happiness. Consequently this has become the only thing Xuela surmises can bring her happiness: “To know all is an impossibility, but only such a thing would satisfy me. To reverse the past would bring me complete happiness.” (pg 226). Thus

Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah depicts a Postcolonial society under African dictatorship. However, the dictator, known as his Excellency, has far more fear in upholding colonial rule than first meets the eye. In wanting to up to, and even conform to previous colonial rule, his power as a leader is repressed. This leads us to understand that post-colonialism is far beyond living in a society without colonial government. Instead, it can be understood as living in a society that has its own form of governing, one that is not dependant or in want of satisfying previous colonisers. Like Anthills of the Savannah, those with the most power, ironically suffer from the most repression of power, which is also a theme that will be highlighted in Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing. Lessing is writing in essentially a rural slave society, with masters and servants clearly knowing their place within it. It is the social discourse, the voice of Rhodesia, which guides everyone in how they should, or should not behave. These behaviours had to conform to the understanding that the white colonisers are superior to the black population. However, a character that was supposed to be liberated and empowered by this social discourse is repressed by it. Mary cannot uphold the social discourse because she does not know how too. Consequently, she becomes a threat to the myth of white cultural superiority. Thus, using these two novels, the term ‘Postcolonial’ will be explored through the