Abandonment in My Mother's Autobiography by Jamaica KincaidXuela, the protagonist of Jamaica Kincaid's novel, My Mother's Autobiography, comments: “I felt that I didn't want to belong to anyone, that since the only person who I would agree to own me had never lived long enough, I didn't want anyone to belong to me” (112). The outward coldness of this statement is clearly observable, but it is the underlying statement that Xuela is making that is truly a significant theme within the novel; Xuela's fear of abandonment. She aborts the child she is carrying, leaving her sterile. She chooses not to be a mother herself. Refuses to establish close relationships with men or women. She is terrified that, like her mother, everyone around her will abandon her. Shortly after her mother's death, Xuela's father entrusts her to the care of the woman who does his laundry. Since she was a child, Xuela understands that first her mother, and now her father, have abandoned her. She realizes, "My mother was dead when I was born, unable to protect herself in a world cruel beyond ordinary imagination, unable to protect herself...