The Postcolonial Orphan’s Autobiography: Authoring the Self in Jamaica Kincaid’s Mr. Potter and Calixthe Beyala’s La Petite fille du réverbère

Abstract

The genre of autobiography in the hands of an orphan might seem ironic: The writing of history by an individual without knowable pre-history. Yet, there is logic to the orphan’s life writing if one views autobiography as the written record of a self-made life. This paper explores the postcolonial orphan autobiography through a reading of Jamaica Kincaid’s Mr. Potter (2002) and Calixthe Beyala’s La Petite fille du réverbè (1998), exposing the coincidence of states of orphanage and states colonization. I demonstrate the manner in which orphanage dominates the postcolonial space; how it manifests itself within individuals and within the state itself. I situate the works within the context of life-writing so as to consider the theme of literacy in postcolonial literature, the agency displayed by the colonized orphan who becomes a writer and the implications for postcolonial states fully prepared to write their own histories.