雅買加˙琴凱德是迦勒比海旅居海外女性作家中最受各界矚目的作家之一。承襲以往琴凱德作品中對於母女關係與祖國間複雜性議題之關懷，《我母親的自傳》係以二十世紀初甫脫離大英殖民帝國統治的多明尼加為背景，故事主人翁蘇拉以第一人稱之敘事口吻，娓娓道來七十餘年來所歷經之滄桑。在此論文中，本人將《我母親的自傳》定義為女兒蘇拉藉由回顧個人生命歷程以重新建立與定位其個人成長的敘述。
本論文一共分為五個章節以探討蘇拉在《我母親的自傳》中的女性自我成長。第一章主要介紹作者琴凱德的成長背景及其寫作歷程。透過文本與其生活經歷之呼應，琴凱德隱微透過其文本傳達她個人的政治企圖，亦即對於過去殖民霸權的泣訴。第二章旨在探討琴凱德是如何將蘇拉的母親與被殖民的多明尼加遙遠的母國做連結，並以逝去的母親作為隱喻，以闡述失落的地方母語、宗教信仰及文化儼然成為多明尼加社會遍存的自我認同危機之主因。第三章乃檢視多明尼加在後殖民時期的家庭場域與殖民論述所產生之性別角色之間的權力關係。經由主角蘇拉的觀察，凸顯琴凱德意欲透過這些弱勢的女性角色傳達作者對於女性在父權體制下之不平之鳴，企圖忠實呈現當代非裔迦勒比海女性的殖民經驗。第四章延續探討蘇拉在建立個人自我認同後，如何透過文字的力量扭轉劣勢，並成為其個人生命自述的一部份。而第五章為本論文之總結，說明琴凱德如何以其主角為其政治企圖辯護，同時也可以說琴凱德最精彩的作品便是她個人之生命歷程。

Jamaica Kincaid is one of the most recognized Caribbean female writers living abroad. The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) is a text that best illustrates the complexities between Kincaid’s concerned mother-daughter relationship and the motherland. The story is set in a 20th-century Dominica and told in the first person voice of its protagonist, Xuela Claudette Desvarieux, shifting back and forth between past-tense and present-tense as she looks back on her seventy years of life. In this thesis, I would argue that The Autobiography of My Mother is an account of reestablishing and readdressing the idea/ ideal of mothering in the process of the daughter’s flashing back of her life.
The Thesis is divided into five parts. Chapter One is the introduction to the author Kincaid’s biography and writing career. Echoing her lived experiences, Kincaid’s work conveys much of the author’s political intention. In Chapter Two of this thesis, I would like to associate Xuela’s absent mother with the distant motherland of the colonized Dominicans. Moreover, I will delineate further how Kincaid uses the absence of Xuela’s mother as a metaphor to signify the absence of mother-tongue, religious belief, and culture as the leading causes of the loss of identity among the Dominicans. In Chapter Three, I first explore the power dynamics within the domestic space and the colonial discursive construction of gender. Then, I intend to examine Xuela’s problematization of the Oedipal family romance and point out Kincaid’s attempt to uncover the colonial experiences of Afro-Caribbean women. Chapter Four is a continuum in the discussion of Xuela’s self formation but the emphasis centers on the process of Xuela’s development of her writing career after fulfilling her basic need of constructing her selfhood. Then, I will conclude the thesis in Chapter Five by saying that Kincaid’s skillful employment of her protagonist helps the author speak up in defense of her political beliefs. In the meantime, Jamaica Kincaid becomes Jamaica’s greatest work of art.

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