There is perhaps no other person who has been so often and obsessively
featured in any writer's canon as Jamaica Kincaid's mother, Annie Drew. In this
provocative new book, Daryl Dance argues that everything Kincaid has written, regardless of its
apparent theme, actually relates to Kincaid's efforts to free herself from her mother,
whether her subject is ostensibly other family members, her home nation, a precolonial world, or
even Kincaid herself.A devoted reader of Kincaid's work, Dance had long been aware of the
author's love-hate relationship with her mother, but it was not until reading the 2008
essay "The Estrangement" that Dance began to ponder who this woman named Annie
Victoria Richardson Drew really was. Dance decided to seek the answers herself, embarking on a
years-long journey to unearth the real Annie Drew.Through interviews and
extensive research, Dance has pieced together a fuller, more contextualized picture in an
attempt to tell Annie Drew's story. Previous analyses of Kincaid's relationship with
her mother have not gone beyond the writer's own carefully orchestrated and sometimes
contrived portraits of her. In Search of Annie Drew offers an alternate
reading of Kincaid's work that expands our understanding of the object of such passionate
love and such ferocious hatred, an ordinary woman who became an unforgettable literary figure
through her talented daughter's renderings.
Copyright:
2016
Book Details
Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780813938455
Publisher:
University of Virginia Press
Date of Addition:
06/20/16
Copyrighted By:
the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia