In search of Annie Drew : Jamaica Kincaid's mother and muse / Daryl Cumber Dance.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dance, Daryl Cumber, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Kincaid, Jamaica--Family.

Kincaid, Jamaica.

Drew, Annie, -1999.

Drew, Annie.

Novelists, Antiguan and Barbudan--Family relationships.

Novelists, Antiguan and Barbudan.

Novelists, Antiguan and Barbudan--20th century--Biography.

Mothers and daughters--Antigua and Barbuda--Antigua.

Mothers and daughters.

Families.

Antigua and Barbuda--Antigua.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xi, 246 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2016.

Summary:

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. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: filling in the gaps

Dominica: the stories begin here

Free and single in Antigua

Raising an only child

Unwanted brothers' arrival/rebel sister's exile

In America, finally

The silent years and the reconnection

Annie Drew and her boys

A brother's death/a sister's fears and fury

Annie Drew's last years

Jamaica's God is stilled

Epilogue: "I married my mother."

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780813938448

0813938449

9780813938462

0813938465

OCLC:

928488266