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- Title
The Postcolonial Orphan's Autobiography: Authoring the Self in Jamaica Kincaid's "Mr. Potter" and Calixthe Beyala's "La Petite fille du réverbère."
- Authors
Everett, Julin
- Abstract
The genre of autobiography in the hands of an orphan might seem ironic: The writing of history by an individual without knowable pre-history. Yet, there is logic to the orphan's life writing if one views autobiography as the written record of a self-made life. This paper explores the postcolonial orphan autobiography through a reading of Jamaica Kincaid's "Mr. Potter" (2002) and Calixthe Beyala's "La Petite fille du réverbè" (1998), exposing the coincidence of states of orphanage and states colonization. I demonstrate the manner in which orphanage dominates the postcolonial space; how it manifests itself within individuals and within the state itself. I situate the works within the context of life-writing so as to consider the theme of literacy in postcolonial literature, the agency displayed by the colonized orphan who becomes a writer and the implications for postcolonial states fully prepared to write their own histories.
- Subjects
AUTOBIOGRAPHY; ORPHANS; MR. Potter (Book); LA Petite Fille du reverbere (Book); KINCAID, Jamaica, 1946-; BEYALA, Calixthe; POSTCOLONIAL analysis
- Publication
College Literature, 2009, Vol 36, Issue 3, p45
- ISSN
0093-3139
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.1353/lit.0.0062