Jamaica Kincaid -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: "When You Think of Me, Think of My Life" -- PART I: In the Shadow of the Mother -- 2. "I Had Embarked on Something Called Self-Invention": Artistic Beginnings in "Antigua Crossings" and At the Bottom of the River -- 3. "The Way I Became a Writer Was That My Mother Wrote My Life for Me and Told It to Me": Living in the Shadow of the Mother in Annie John -- 4. "As I Looked at This Sentence a Great Wave of Shame Came over Me and I Wept and Wept": The Art of Memory, Anger, and Despair in Lucy -- PART II: A Very Personal Politics -- 5. "Imagine the Bitterness and the Shame in Me as I Tell You This": The Political Is Personal in A Small Place and "On Seeing England for the First Time" -- PART III: Family Portraits -- 6. "I Would Bear Children, but I Would Never Be a Mother to Them": Writing Back to the Contemptuous Mother in The Autobiography of My Mother -- 7. "I Shall Never Forget Him Because His Life Is the One I Did Not Have": Remembering Her Brother's Failed Life in My Brother -- 8. "Like Him and His Own Father before Him, I Have a Line Drawn through Me": Imagining the Life of the Absent Father in Mr. Potter -- 9. Conclusion: "I Am Writing for Solace": Seeking Solace in Writing, Gardening, and Domestic Life -- Notes -- Chapter 1 -- Chapter 2 -- Chapter 3 -- Chapter 4 -- Chapter 5 -- Chapter 6 -- Chapter 7 -- Chapter 8 -- Chapter 9 -- Works Cited -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- W -- Y.