Annie John by Jamica Kincaid

There is something about a mother- daughter relationship. Unlike Annie, I grew up with an older sister, Claire. only a year and a half apart, we did everything together. The only thing we ever did seperately was our activities with my mom. For some odd reason, she preferred to have a lot of private time with each of us. She would steal me from school for lunches and leave claire to go to all of her classes. Then when I would come home from friend's houses, Claire and mom would be chatting in Mom's room with the door closed. I always felt that she wanted to have a special, but different relationship with both of us. And honestly, I adored her. When I was little I thought she was the smartest, most beautiful and interesting woman that ever lived. She could cook and clean and make things and paint rooms and tuck me in just right and make everyone laugh, etc, etc, etc. But then there was that point when I swear, out of no where, I just hated her. I was 11, it's a bad age for girls. So when I read Kincaid's portrayal of intense daughterly hatred, I assumed it was just a universal thing. That her book was explanatory. I figured that she was dramatizing a commonality amongst all adolesent girls, begining with early childhood, where the identity mainly is shaped by the mother and love for that mother. Then shifting to sudden that hatred for her, for whatever reason.
Then again, I see a lot of differences between Annie John and myself. I never didn't have to share my mom with my sister. The sense of belonging to one-another between mom and I was always interrupted with this needy other person. When I was young and longed for my mother, I felt like she longed for me too, and that we had this rebellous fun love that had to be hidden from my sensitive sister. As I grew older, i felt like my mom abandoned me for Claire, and I inturn wanted to rebel by not loving her as much back.
I sense that Annie's story is meant to be different in someway from most of the readers in virtue of the context that she is living within. That her culture somehow pushes her away from her mother in a way that I cannot understand as a situated knower, but Kinciad makes it unclear how so. Maybe as she matures and experiences her world she sees that her mom cannot protect her from her surroundings, and feels betrayed. And perhaps because she never had to share her mother with anyone else, the betrayal begins when she realizes that her mother has needs that only her father can fulfill. Without a sibling to cushion her feelings of neglect, she resorts to her intense fantasy world.
I feel as though Annie's confusing social identity makes her feel alienated from any sort of outsider understanding that she clearly longs for from others. This novel was certainly an interesting glimpse into the mother-daughter bond, and how extended awareness of the controlling outside world can tamper with it.