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# Amit S. Rai begins his essay, "’Thus Spake the Subaltern…’: Postcolonial Criticism and the Scene of Desire," with the following question: "If we are sure today that the subaltern cannot speak, can we be as sure that her ghost does not, especially when postcolonial criticism seems to re-present the discourse of that ghost?" (91). In The Autobiography of My Mother, that ghost speaks in multiple voices which blur the lines between fiction, biography, autobiography, and criticism. I adopt Rai’s figure of the ghost here not to detract from the powerful subjectivity of Kincaid’s narrator, Xuela, whom Kincaid calls "more godlike" than her previous protagonists, but to emphasize her ability to transcend traditional literary and political realms.[1] Xuela tells of her life on postcolonial Dominica, and while her story is intensely private, avoiding mention of the island’s political affairs in favor of her thoughts and relationships, it is imbrued with the history of colonialism......

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