Rating: 
Summary: pretty writing - imagery not meant to be pretty
Review: I think more readers should read this in context of Jamaica Kincaid's own personal life, especially regarding her torn relationship with her mother. It would then become extremely touching, as Kincaid really writes this to save her own living. While other reviewers have found this book to be harsh or dirty in some sense, we should gain the sense that this narrator is really at a loss for love, that there is so little to love, but was able to find love in herself.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but not her best
Review: It is difficult to rate Autobiography of My Mother fairly; Jamaica Kincaid has written excellent books - At the Bottom of the River, Lucy . . . - and this book is only well above average. Were my expectations not so high, the things that are right about the book would stand out more against the portions that don't work. She is at her best when portraying the inability to love and the bitterness at the colonialist religion. However, there are points in the story where the political portrayal of victor vs. vanquished becomes a polemic out of character of the protagonist. A good book that is well worth reading - but is probably more enjoyable if you have read Annie John, Lucy or One Small Place so that the political polemic fits the reader's growing knowledge of the author rather than simply being an element less adroitly handled in this particular book.
Rating:
Summary: powerful, poetic, quintessential kincaid
Review: Jamaica Kincaid's most recent book, The Autobiography of My Mother, is a poetically rendered account of a woman's journey through loss, longing, hope, and strength. Kincaid's writing here is imagistic and human so that the reader can enter the character's life. The work questions our distinctions between poetry and prose, fiction and autobiography, the personal and the political. This book is a sensual and intellectual pleasure
Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully written.
Review: Kincaid shows that she's a talented author. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY MOTHER is beautifully written. It's not about her mother at all, but about the search for knowledge about this woman that she never met. And thereby a search into herself (well, into the character's self). It's quiet. She even describes ugliness quietly. "I long to meet the thing greater than I am, the thing to which I can submit." I was able to sink into it as I read it, but the book didn't stay with me after I was done.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings..
Review: My feelings are very mixed about this book. There is no doubt that Kincaid has the ability to weave together beautiful and thoughtful moments. However, I had a difficult time staying interested in the book. I understand the book to be written in the style of the characters history, experiences and misfortunes . A child raised without love, who grows into a woman without the ability to love. Life without love becomes a life filled with philosophical insight on human behavior, love and death. Overall, the main character's inability to rise above an emotional flat line kept me disconnected, which prevents me from recommending this book with too much enthusiasm. I didn't feel that the character's description of the events matched her bleak emotional landscape.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings..
Review: My feelings are very mixed about this book. There is no doubt that Kincaid has the ability to weave together beautiful and thoughtful moments. However, I had a difficult time staying interested in the book. I understand the book to be written in the style of the characters history, experiences and misfortunes . A child raised without love, who grows into a woman without the ability to love. Life without love becomes a life filled with philosophical insight on human behavior, love and death. Overall, the main character's inability to rise above an emotional flat line kept me disconnected, which prevents me from recommending this book with too much enthusiasm. I didn't feel that the character's description of the events matched her bleak emotional landscape.
Rating:
Summary: Skillful Characterization, Writing, and Description
Review: The Autobiography of My Mother is not an autobiography at all, and it is not even solely about a mother. It is actually a novel about a woman whose mother died when she was being born. This first life event, which is also the first event the narrator tells the reader about in the story, is a powerful force that shapes the narrator's life. Not only does narrator (Xuela) not have a mother, but she feels that she does not actually have a country, a homeland. She lives on the island of Antigua, which is only twelve miles long and nine miles long. The culture of her people was stolen by their English colonizers, and the only culture they now know is that of England. In my opinion, there are times in the book when the narrator is self-pitying and repetitive. I do think, however, that this is in keeping with her character. The book is written as if Xuela is sitting down with the reader and telling him or her her life story, and Xuela would definitely be a character who would repeat and overemphasize the bad parts just so the person listening would get the point. I also found fault with the narrator because she was very hyprocritical. She critized her father's actions and attitude about life, but then she acted in simliar ways and had a simliar attitude. The one positive aspect about the main character is that she is a very strong woman who is not afraid to deviate from her society's acceptable ways of behaving. I was surprised that I liked this book so much when I did not like the narrator. I think it is because Kincaid had such an integrity when it came to writing about the main character. She presented all aspects, positive and negative, and didn't only show her in a good light. All aspiring authors can learn a lesson in characterization from reading this book. Kincaid's writing style is very seductive. It pulls you in and makes you not want to get away. I read this book in two long settings because I didn't want to put it down. She has a powerful way of describing people, places, and situations. Her prose is lyrical and truthful - after reading a passage, I wanted to sit back and think about it for awhile, because there was so much truth and beauty to be found in it. This is the first book I have read by Jamaica Kincaid. I am presently reading "A Small Place", and hope to read the rest of her books in the future. I would recommend this book to anyone, but especially to writers who are interested in reading very high quality writing with strong charactarization and powerful description.
Rating:
Summary: Maternal abandonment's permanent damage
Review: This amazing novel succeeds at its ambitious and worthy goal which, in my view, is to show with precision - intellectual, emotional, visual, auditory, olfactory - the sinister mechanism and the devastating results of maternal abandonment. Kincaid's narrator suffers a grievous loss, and the circumstances of her life reinforce and magnify that loss. No one has ever protected her and she hangs onto life by a thread. Though amidst "family," she is truly alone in the world. Franz Kafka wrote that one should only read novels that hurt, because those are the works that raise consciousness. This straightforward and skillful novel is replete with imagery of anger, sadness, and layers of detail that provoke utter despair in the reader - and that's just Kincaid's point. Kafka would have approved of this gripping story.
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Summary: An important book
Review: This book carries an empowering message that every woman can benefit from about embracing one's femaleness and sexuality. It is sad that some readers are frightened and offended (these two emotions go hand-in-hand) by the exploration of the body's potential for pleasure and power; this fear is exactly what Kincaid would like her readers to move away from. Women are taught from early childhood onward that their bodies and sexuality are shameful, but the protagonist in The Autobiography of My Mother teaches us that the body should be celebrated, rather than shunned. This world would be a healthier place if all of us adopted such an attitude.
Rating: 
Summary: terrible and gripping: I don't like it but is it a bad book?
Review: This book leaves me restless and mixed up. I don't like it and yet I can't stop thinking about it. The narrator Xuela tells us how pleased she is with herself, she repeatedly deplores the emptiness and cruelty of life and she describes all the women (not the men) she's lived with in a spiteful manner. This mixture incites my anger. I don't like this Xuela, she doesn't reveal some missing links holding the different aspects of her personality together. However, she doesn't have to, it might be part of her strength to keep herself a secret - or is it just a weekness of her creator, Jamaica Kincaid, who hasn't really worked out this character? What really disappointed me was the fact, that no effort is spent on finding out more about Xuelas mother, who figures prominently in the title of the book but only marginally inside. The explanation at the end doesn't satisfy me: "This account of my life has been an account of my mother's life as much as it has been an account! of mine ... In me is the voice I never heard, the face I never saw, the being I came from." It's an arrogant statement annihilating the mother's life. But that's not unlike the character of this narrator. Maybe the strength of the book is, that Xuela still doesn't leave me alone and stirs me to think about how I react to women who approach life in a very different way from what I do or would like to do.
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