“Holidays” follows the young woman through her quest for independence as she leaves home to take on a job as an au pair for an American couple. “It comprises an attempt to boost her self-image even as it communes on the division between life and art”. Kincaid herself had left her island home in Antigua at age 17 to take on a similar position working for an affluent family in Scarsdale, New York. “The Letter from Home” was first published in "The New Yorker" on April 20, 1981. It is written in the form of a letter listing mundane household chores. The narrative perspective seems to shift liberally from mother to daughter. The daughter, having left home, is sent a letter informing her of what has taken place since her departure. “it chronicles the grief and pain of the domestic scene, and it transmits the sadness and loss of those who are left behind”. “What I Have Been Doing Lately” was first published in "The Paris Review" in 1981. It chronicles the adventures of an unidentified narrator walking through an ever-changing and surreal landscape. “The narrator muses scenarios aloud to voice herself into an indeterminate environment, both visionary and material”. The story is about exploring the world. “Blackness” is a despondent tale in which the narrator feels deeply isolated. “The daughter in “Blackness” experiences the detached calm of a dissociated state as she becomes swallowed up in the soft blackness. Absorbed in the blackness, cut off from the real world, she feels ‘annihilated’ and ‘erased,’ unable to point to herself ‘and say I’. “My Mother” examines a power-struggle or love-hate relationship between mother and daughter. The young female narrator attempts to liberate herself emotionally and physically from her mother. “My Mother” exposes the daughter's burning anger and hatred for the all-powerful mother”. “At the Bottom of the River” is the title story and the longest in the collection. The mother-daughter relationship is once again the main thematic focus. The young female narrator is now coming to terms with her identity and finally resolves to accept and embrace herself and her world. “The girl finds direction and substance, not so much in her visionary flights as in familiar objects: books, a chair, a table, a bowl of fruit, a bottle of milk, a flute made of wood.