Use of language in my mother's autobiography. It's the way words flow into sentences, that flow into paragraphs, that flow into novels. It is the author's ability to create an intricate web of plot, emotion, symbolism, and relationships through words alone. In The Autobiography of My Mother, Jamaica Kincaid uses language in a very simplistic, yet very effective way. His writing is direct and to the point. There are neither flowery words nor complex sentence structures. Without the distractions of overflowing language, the depth of Kincaid's material emerges particularly effectively. It is the simplest element of writing, that of repetition and opposition, that Kincaid uses to create a novel rich in language and eloquence. The most important linguistic aspect of the novel is its lack of dialogue. There is not a line of dialogue in the entire novel. This reliance on narrative accomplishes several things for Kincaid's protagonist, Xuela Claudette Richardson. First, it allows Xuela to be defined only by herself. There...