| Contents |
"When you think of me, think of my life" -- "I had embarked on something called self-invention" : artistic beginnings in "Antigua crossings" and At the bottom of the river -- "The way I became a writer was that my mother wrote my life for me and told it to me" : living in the shadow of the mother in Annie John -- "As I looked at this sentence a great wave of shame came over me and I wept and wept" : the art of memory, anger, and despair in Lucy -- "Imagine the bitterness and the shame in me as I tell you this" : the political is personal in A small place and "On seeing England for the first time" -- "I would bear children, but I would never be a mother to them" : writing back to the contemptuous mother in The autobiography of my mother -- "I shall never forget him because his life is the one I did not have" : remembering her brother's failed life in My brother -- "Like him and his own father before him, I have a line drawn through me" : imagining the life of the absent father in Mr. Potter -- "I am writing for solace" : seeking solace in writing, gardening, and domestic life. |
