Jamaica Kincaid has blessed us with a beautifully insightful story about false identity construction as it relates to childhood which somehow manages to be neither a cliche nor demeaning. Annie John is written from the perspective of the book's namesake as she grows up from the age of ten well into her teenage years. She is a precocious girl within her own mind but really a very nervous, excitable person. Over the course of the book, she relates in relatively immature though not simplistic terms how she learned to form her identity and her views on reality.
To begin with, Annie has an enviable relationship with her mother. The two are inseparable when Annie is a small child. Unfortunately this leads to an astonishing level of dependency to the point where Annie is developmentally delayed in learning to distinguish herself and her identity from that of her mother's. They bathe together, dress identically, and spend all of their time together. They are practically the same person. In Annie's mind this translates to her actually being a carbon miniature of her mother, whose experience she worships as a perfect and divine form of herself. This false conception of identity is shattered dramatically when Annie reaches age twelve or so and is sent to a boarding school. After hinting for a while that things are changing and that Annie should outgrow her dependency upon and identification with her mom, Annie Senior finally pushes her away into school and adolescence. In school Annie is faced with an existential crisis. The thought of not being allowed to be the same being as her mother anymore is unbearable to her because it's incompatible with her entire view of reality, so she essentially throws an existential fit. Forbidden from identifying with her mom any longer, she searches for someone else to whom she can intertwine her identity. She attempts to do this with her peers, but alas is never successful.
Over time, she begins to re-frame her beliefs about existence. She is her own being, however unhappy she may be with that truth. This acceptance is accompanied by bitterness. She starts to think that she has never loved her mom and never will. How could a being which she had always worshiped disappoint her so much? Then Annie gets sick. Reminding her of her childhood fascination with death, she realizes that she may die from this illness. Her parents are devastated over her illness. Her mom thinks it is a manifestation of the curse which killed her own father, but Annie's dad prides himself on his belief in western medicine. Both approach Annie's care in opposite ways, resenting the other one for their perspective. This division among her parents reinforces Annie's developing perspective that she cannot in fact rely upon any person to facilitate her identity. Seeing her parents bicker, she recognizes that she is neither of those people. This leads to a new sense of acceptance, one which allows her to rest at last. And she heals.
