本文旨在探討「逝去的母親」在牙買加‧琴凱德的《我母親的自傳》中所代表的意義。該作品的標題十分弔詭：母親已死，何以立傳？雖名為《我母親的自傳》，內容卻是敘述者女兒一生的故事。其中矛盾有二：自傳何以能由人代筆？既是小說又何以能為自傳？本文所探討的重點在於琴凱德如何藉由男性的自傳文類，從事女性書寫。依史碧瓦克(Gayatri Spivak)的觀點，弱勢者無發言權。回應史碧瓦克的觀點，本文指出《我母親的自傳》是一部關於一個已死的母親的故事，更確切地說，這是一個女鬼的故事。
本文分為四章。第一章總覽女性自傳的歷史，非裔美籍的女性自傳，加勒比海非裔美籍女性自傳，及琴凱德的作品回顧。第二章著重於女性的自我建構，首先對關於《我母親的自傳》一書之評論做詳盡的分析；其次探討女性自傳傾向於以他者呈現自我的敘述技巧，本節將《我母親的自傳》與戈楚德‧史坦恩(Gertrude Stein)的《艾莉絲‧塔克勒斯的自傳》(The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas)做比較對照，因為兩者皆以他人之名立傳；接著，在探討婚姻對建立女性主體的影響上，並讀夏洛特‧勃朗特(Charlotte Brontë) 之《簡愛》(Jane Eyre)與《我母親的自傳》。第三章檢視以家庭作為國家的比喻，討論的範疇包括(重)書家園；女性身體作為反動的力量；最後，母女關係在琴凱德的作品中十分重要，本節旨在比較《我母親的自傳》及東妮‧莫里森(Toni Morrison)的《寵兒》(Beloved) 中的母親角色。第四章總結。

This thesis is a study of the figure of the deceased mother in Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother (hereafter designated as AMM). The work is paradoxical in that it claims to be the “self-life-writing” of a mother who dies at the very moment of the birth of her daughter. The paradox is resolved in relation to Gayatri Spivak’s assertion of “the unspeakability of the subaltern. In contrast to the silence of the Spivakian subaltern, I contend that the dead mother is able to voice herself through “ghostography,” that is, the writing of a ghost. It is my argument that Kincaid locates her postcolonial agency by telling the stories of a subaltern mother ghost.
The thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter One serves as an introductory chapter, including four parts: the generic history of women’s autobiographies, the history of African American women autobiographies, the history of African- Caribbean-American women’s self writings, and a brief review of Kincaid’s earlier semi-autobiographical works. Chapter Two centers on the issue of the construction of the female self, consisting of the review of the critical essays on The Autobiography of My Mother, the representation of self/other by comparing AMM with Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and finally the formation of female subjectivity by paralleling Kincaid’s Xuela with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The discussion in Chapter Three focuses on the trope of family-as-nation, involving the issues of writing home, the female body as power of resistance, and the intertexual reading of the mother-daughter dyad between AMM and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Chapter Four gives the conclusion by arguing that it is in Xuela’s story that the mother’s story will be told. Likewise, it is in Kincaid’s fictional ghostography that the narrative of her motherland will find an expression.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.
Andrews, William L., ed. African American Autobiography. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993.
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 1969; Virago Press, 1984.
“Autobiography.” Def. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.
Benstock, Shari, ed. The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P; London: Routledge, 1988.
Bernard, Louise. “Countermemory and Return: Reclamation of the (postmodern) Self in Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother and My Brother.” Modern Fiction Studies 48.1 (2002): 113-38.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London ; NY: Routledge, 1994
Birbalsingh, Frank, ed. Frontiers of Caribbean Literature in English. London; Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press, 1996.
Blackburn, Regina. “In Search of the Black Female Self: African-American Women’s Autobiographies and Ethnicity.” Estelle 133-48.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1996.
Bonetti, Kay. “An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid.” The Missouri Review 15.2 (1992): 124-42.
Braxton, Joanne M. “Symbolic Geography and Psychic Landscapes: A Conversation with Maya Angelou.” Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings: a Casebook. Ed. Braxton. NY: Oxford UP, 1999. 3-20.
Breslin, James E. “Gertrude Stein and the Problems of Autobiography.” Jelinek, 149-62.
Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth, ed. Women of Color: Mother-daughter Relationships in 20th-century Literature. Austin: U of Texas P, 1996
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Criticism. Ed. Richard J. Dunn. NY: Norton, 1971.
Bruss, Elizabeth. Autobiographical Acts: The Changing Situation of a Literary Center. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976.
Burr, Anna. The Autobiography: A Critical and Comparative Study. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909.
Bush, Barbara. “Towards Emancipation: Slave Women and Resistance to Coercive Labour Regimes in the British West Indian Colonies, 1790-1838.” Slavery and Abolition 5 (December 1984).
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. NY: Routledge, 1990.
---. The Psychic Life of Power. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1997.
Butterfield, Stephen. Black Autobiography in America. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1974.
Chambers, Iain. Migrancy, Culture, Identity. London; NY: Routledge, 1994.
Chodorow. Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: U of California P, 1978.
Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of Medusa.” New French Feminisms. Eds. Elaine Mark & Isabelle de Courtivron. NY: Schocken Books, 1981.
Cixous, Hélène & Catherine Clément. The Newly Born Woman. Trans. Besty Wing. Minneapolis : U of Minnesota P,1986. Trans. of La Jenue Née. Paris: Union Générate ďĒditions, 1975. 245-64.
Cudjoe, Selwyn R. “Introduction.” Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference. Ed. Cudjoe. Wellesley, Massachusetts: Calaloux Publications, 1990. 5-50.
---. “Jamaica Kincaid and the Modernist Project: An Interview.” Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference. Ed. Cudjoe. Wellesley, Massachusetts: Calaloux Publications, 1990. 215-32.
Davies, Carole Boyce. Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. London and NY: Routledge, 1994.
de Abruna, Laura Niesen . “Jamaica Kincaid’s Writing and the Maternal-Colonial Matrix.” Caribbean Women Writers: Fiction in English. Eds. Mary Conde & Thorunn Lonsdale. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hamphire: Macmillan Press; NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. 172-83.
Donnell, Alison. “When Writing the Other is Being True to the Self: Jamaica
Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother.” Ed. Pauline Polkey. Women’s Lives into Print: The Theory, Practice, and Writing of Feminist Auto/Biography. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press; NY: St. Martin's Press, 1999. 123-36.
---. “When Daughters Defy: Jamaica Kincaid’s Fiction.” Women: A Cultural Review 4.1 (1993): 18-26.
Douglass, Fredrick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Written by Himself. 1845; Cambridge: Belknap-Harvard UP, 1960.
Ferguson, Moira. Jamaica Kincaid: Where the Land Meets the Body. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1994
---. “A Lot of Memory: An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid.” The Kenyon Review NS 16.1 (1994): 163-88.
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. “My Statue, My Self: Autobiographical Writings of Afro-American Women.” Benstock 63-89.
Friedman, Susan Stanford. “Women’s Autobiographical Selves: Theory and Practice.” Benstock 34-62.
Gilmore Leigh. Autobiographics: A Feminist Theory of Women’s Self-Representation. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994.
Guo, Wuan-ling. Crossing Borders All the Time: The Literary Productions of Jamaica Kincaid in the Caribbean Context. Ed. National Taiwan University. Taipei: NTU, 1994.
Hall, Stuart. “Signification, Althusser and the Post-Structuralist Debates,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 1985. 91-114.
---. “Minimal Selves.” Black British Cultural Studies: A Reader. Ed. Houston A. Baker, Jr., Manthia Diawara, and Ruth H. Lindeborg. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. 114-19.
Hirsch, Marianne. The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989.
hooks, bell. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography. 1942. Ed. Robert Hemmenway. 2nd ed. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1984.
Irigaray Luce. “When Our Lips Speak Together.” Trans. Catherine Lorter. The Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985. 205-218.
Jacobs, Harriet [Linda Brent]. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. 1861; NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.
Jelinek, Estelle C., ed. Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1980.
---. The Tradition of Women’s Autobiography. Diss. State University of New York at Buffalo, 1977. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1977. 7732669.
Kent, George E. “Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Black Autobiographical Tradition.” Andrews 162-70.
Kincaid, Jamaica. At the Bottom of the River. NY: Farrar, 1983; London: Pan, 1984.
---. Annie John. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985; London: Picador, 1985.
---. “In History.” Callaloo 20:1 (1997). 1-22.
---. A Small Place. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988; London: Virago, 1988.
---. Lucy. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990; London: Virago, 1991.
---. The Autobiography of My Mother. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996.
Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language: A Semiotics Approach to Literature and Art. NY: Columbia UP, 1980.
---. Revolution in Poetic Language. Trans. Margaret Waller. NY: Columbia UP, 1984.
Krumholz, Linda. "The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical Recovery in Toni Morrison's Beloved." African American Review 26 (Fall 1992): 395-409.
Lawrence, Leota S. “The Historical Perspective of the Caribbean Woman.” Negro Historical Bulletin 47, nos1 and 2 (1984).
Lionnet, Françoise. Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-portraiture. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989.
Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1982.
---. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984.
Martin, Janette. The Dynamics of Expatriatism in the Writing of Jane Eyre and
Jamaica Kincaid. Diss. Bowling Green State U, 1994. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1995. 9541518.
Mason, Mary. “The Other Voice: Autobiographies of Women Writers.” Olney 207-35.
McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. NY: Routledge, 1995.
Martin, Manette. The Dynamics of Expatriatism in the Writing of Jean Rhys and Jamaica Kincaid. Diss. Bowling Green State University, 1994. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1995. 9541518.
Minh-ha, Trinh.T. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1989.
Misch, George. A History of Autobiography in Antiquity. 2 vols. 1907; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved: A Novel. NY: Plume, 1988.
---. “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature.” Modern Critical Views: Toni Morrison. Ed. Harold Bloom. NY: Chelsea House, 1990.
Murdoch, H. Adlai. “Severing the (M)other Connection: The Representation of Cultural Identity in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” Callaloo: An Afro-American and African Journal of Arts and Letters 13 (1990): 325-40.
Olney, James, ed. “Autobiography and the Cultural Moment: A Thematic, Historical, and Bibliographical Introduction.” Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Ed. Olney. NJ: Princeton UP, 1980. 3-27.
O’Connor, Teresa. The Meaning of the West Indian Experience for Jean Rhys. Diss. New York University, 1985.
Perry, Donna. “Initiation in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” Cudjoe 245-53.
Pomerleau, Cynthia S. “The Emergence of Women’s Autobiography in England.” Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism. Ed. Estelle C. Jelinek. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1980. 21-38.
Prince, Mary. The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself. Ed. Moira Ferguson. London: Pandora, 1987.
Rai, Amit S. “ ‘Thus Spake the Subaltern…’: Postcolonial Criticism and the Scene of Desire.” The Psychoanalysis of Race. Ed. Christopher Lane. NY: Columbia UP, 1998. 91-119.
Rhys, Jean. Voyage in the Dark. 1934; NY: W.W. Norton, 1982.
---. Wide Sargasso Sea. 1966; NY: Norton, 1992.
Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. NY: Norton, 1986.
Rigney, Barbara Hill. The Voices of Toni Morrison. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1991.
Rukeyser, Muriel. “Myth.” 1968.
Said, Edward. “Traveling Theory.” The Edward Said Reader. Ed. Moustafa Bayoumini and Andrew Rubin. NY: Vintage Books, 2000. 195-217.
Savory, Elaine. “Ex/Isle: Separation, Memory, and Desire in Caribbean Women’s
Writing.” Winds of Change: The Transforming Voices of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars. Eds. Adele S, Newson, et al. NY: Peter Lang, 1998. 169-77.
Schultheis, Alexandra. “Family Matters in Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of
My Mother.” Jouvert: a Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 5.2 (2001): 36
paragraphs.
Seacole, Mary. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. Ed. William L. Andrews. NY: Oxford UP, 1988.
Sherrard, Cherene. “The ‘Colonizing’ Mother Figure in Paule Marshall’s Brown
Girl, Brownstones and Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My
Mother.” MaComère: Journal of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers
& Scholars 2 (1999): 125-33.
Simmons, Diane. “Coming-of-Age in the Snare of History: Jamaica Kincaid’s The
Autobiography of My Mother.” The Girl: Constitution of the Girl in
Contemporary Fiction by Women. NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. 107-18.
Smith, Sidonie. A Poetics of Women's Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions of Self-Representation. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.
---. Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body: Women’s Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993.
Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson, eds. Women, Autobiography, Theory: a Reader. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1998.
Stanley, Liz. The Auto/biographical I: The Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/biography. Manchester; NY: Manchester UP, 1992.
---, ed. Lives & Works: Auto/biographical Occasions 3:1 and 3:2 (1994).
Stein, Gertrude. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. 1933; NY: Vintage, 1961.
Steiner, Wendy. Exact Resemblance to Exact Resemblance: The Literary Portraiture of Gertrude Stein. New Heaven: Yale UP, 1978.
Stone, Albert E. “After Black Boy and Dusk of Dawn: Patterns in Recent Black Autobiography.” Andrews 171-95.
---. “Identity and Art in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative.” College Language Association Journal 17 (1973): 192-213.
Timothy, Helen Pyne. “Adolescent Rebellion and Gender Relations in At the Bottom of the River and Annie John.” Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference. Ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley, Massachusetts: Calaloux Publications, 1990. 233-44.
Vorda, Allan. “An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid.” Mississippi Review 20.1-1(1991): 7-26.
Wilson, Harriet E. Our Nig; Or, Stretches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House, North. Showing that Slavery’s Shadows Fall Even There. Ed. Henry Louis Gates. NY: Vintage, 1983.