SOURCE: “Gender and Exile: Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy,” in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 44, No. 1, Spring, 1998, pp. 169–83.

In the following review, Mahlis examines aspects of cultural alienation, the mother-daughter relationship, and female sexuality in Lucy, focusing on the female protagonist's efforts to “decolonize” herself. According to Mahlis, Kincaid's portrayal of Lucy evokes “the space of the female exile, a space that is shaped by the complex interaction between the female body and masculinist cultural imperatives.”

But what I see is the millions of people, of whom I am just one. made orphans: no motherland, no fatherland, no gods, no mounds of earth for holy ground, no excess of love which might lead to the things that an excess of love sometimes brings, and worst and most painful of all, no tongue.

—Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place

The above quote, taken from the Antiguan writer Jamaica Kincaid's polemical work on the...