For the post-colonial writers who explore the life of people in diaspora, the concept of “the mother” is significant because, as Simone A. James Alexander argues, it “is the cord that (dis)unites the motherland and the mother country.” While “mother countries” signify Western colonial rulers such as England, France, and the United States, “motherlands” include the colonized countries such as India, the Caribbean, and Africa. In addition to the geographical and political senses, “the mother” also means a biological or surrogate figure in the homeland. Alexander further claims that the nurturing figure can be “other,” in other words, “an enemy to her daughter, particularly when she appears to advocate colonial habits and mannerisms.” Actually, while the post-colonial writers expose mother-daughter relationships which are negatively affected by the colonial rule, they also create subversive figures who challenge the legacy of colonialism. Examinations of how the female protagonist Clare in Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven (1987) and Lucy in Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy (1990) receive the letters from their mothers, and how they respond to them will show psychological dis/connections with their mothers and motherlands. Moreover, by comparing the descriptions of the letters exchanged between a male character Chacko and his mother in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997) with those appeared in the other two novels, it will be clear that the gender difference plays a significant role in the construction of the characters’ relationship with their mothers and motherlands.
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