Ecological Sensibilities in Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother

Abstract

With the development of ecocriticism as a literary theory that brings in other disciplines into literature, literary artists have been provided with a framework which treats the relationship between humans, nature and the environment and to find significant ways by which this relationship can be encompassing. Humankind’s search for a suitable life has led to a conscious or unconscious destruction of nature’s elements, which elements are very useful in defining individuals within specific cultural and geographical locations. The central argument in this paper rests on the significance of nature in authenticating individual and collective belonging to given spaces with respect to the coloniser/ colonised matrix. Kincaid, in her 1996 fictional autobiographical novel, The Autobiography of My Mother, uses elements of nature to defend the collective cultural and personal values of the Dominican people and a vehicle for literary aesthetics. Considering the humans’ dependence on nature for their wellbeing, this study opts for an ecological consciousness that will help preserve nature and by extension, humankind.