My first foray into Kincaid's wide body of work, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. Basically analyzes her, let's say, "complicated" relation with her family - her cruel mother, her feuding brothers, and in particular, her wild and horn-dog-y brother who, during the span covered by the memoir, is diagnosed with AIDS, undergoes a respite from death's door with the help of anti-retrovirals, and then dies from the disease's complications. A number of cultural factors lend the book some greater weight than I think Kincaid wants to fully interrogate - her family is in Antigua, where, at the time of the memoir's "narrative," HIV and AIDS are little understood illnesses, and much maligned because of their association with MSM populations. This likewise becomes a conflict for Kincaid's brother, who wishes to disavow both the homophobic stigma attached to the disease and to avoid acknowledging his diagnosis in any regard. At the end of the memoir, after her brother's death, Kincaid discovers that, in fact, her brother did have sex with men and had kept this closeted from basically everyone who knew him in his life. Kincaid doesn't necessarily consider this secrecy or this identity deeply, and I think does her memoir a disservice by treating the revelation almost as a kind of "whodunnit" moment of disclosure. Her privileged position of knowing is underscored, though quietly, from the very beginning -- and of course, is unavoidable in the life writing genre, I suppose. At other times, Kincaid is beautifully humane in considering her brother's suffering, and in recognizing the disease, despite her obvious distaste for her Antiguan family. Particularly wonderful was her attention to the permeability of the body, her distinction between the precarious but confident lives most people lead and the kind of living death that certain populations outside of the cultural or political center must reside in, emblematized here by the corporeal limbo of the patient with AIDS. I'd like to say things are different contemporarily, and certainly there have been leaps and bounds in the fight against the virus, but is there any other illness so misunderstood and so stigmatized even in supposedly "liberal" countries like the U.S.? I think a lot of people get off on believing that we've developed a kind of sophistication in relation to AIDS that "those people" in the Caribbean or in Africa can hardly fathom, but perhaps one thing this memoir serves to remind us of is that even in privileged positions or "educated" communities, there's a great deal of blindness, hypocrisy, and terror regarding the epidemic.Oh me oh my! That was a depressing end to the review. Sorry, I've been reading a ton of books with HIV at their center this summer, and as a gay man born after the rise of the epidemic, this is a terror that has never not been peripheral in my life. So, yeah, pour a drink and cheer up, y'all?
I was curious when she finished the first section of the text and her brother had finally died what she could possibly conceive to round out the remainder of the pages. I thought to myself "what more is there to tell". This title was engaging, insightful, and reflective upon the interactions that occur between parents, children, and siblings in the course of coming of age into our vast adulthood.This might have just as easily been about my relationship with either of my brothers Tony or Rahsaan or even my sister Danielle for at one point we thought we knew one another and then suddenly we grew and we found we didn't know each other that well at all anymore. Still we are family and we do have this thing we are searching through inside of ourselves called "love" appropriately. It is a word difficult to define and death causes us to face and figure out the workings of its pieces.Death. I have wondered to myself how I would encounter and move my way around it. For as much as I could not understand Jamaica's feelings towards her family, she used a tactic that I imagine I might also (and have) use when tackling an issue as piercing as death. Writing through it. The largest part of the text is a reflective first person dialogue around the subject of death and her reactions to it as she discovers more each day the brother whom she never really knew.
What do You think about My Brother (1998)?
This is an extended poem, staccato and repetitive. It brings together the strands of Kincaid’s brother’s life and death. The syntax seems awkward at first, but it grows on you, and it ends up as hypnotic as a chant. Writing this review, I find myself unconsciously imitated the rhythm of the book, its loops and pauses. This is about observing death, and about dipping into old family nightmares while maintaining a sense of separation. Kincaid remains on the edge, puzzling about this death that’s so predictable and yet so shocking.
—Jenny Yates
i wouldlike to tell about this book for me is a interesting book a little hard to read due to the repetitive words but eassy vocabulary and interesting theme like is the HIV disease this story tell us about life in a small island antigua and jamaica kincaid brothers he got abuse drugs and he had many sexual partners also we can say he got a messy,irresponsable life that's why he got contagious of the terrible disease like is the HIV ,She blame her mother even tough we can see how her mother help devon during his illness days ,jamaica compare alot plants tryin to describe his brother life ,for me this is a sad story about a careless guy and a family with strange feelings and resentful daugther.Cuasing suffering to his family for his sickness .
—John
“What to make of it [death]? Why can’t everybody just get used to it? People are born and they just can’t go on and on…but it is so hard, so hard for the people left behind; it’s so hard to see them go, as if it had never happened before, and so hard it could not happen to anyone else, no one but you could survive this kind of loss, seeing someone go, seeing them leave you behind…”My Brother is Jamaica Kincaid’s retelling of time spent both before and after the loss of her brother to HIV. At the center of both their stories (Kincaid’s and her brother’s) is a domineering mother whose presence casts a long shadow on the lives of her children. Late in the book, it is revealed that Kincaid’s brother was active in the underground homosexual scene of Antigua (where exactly he contracted the disease remains ambiguous, although one might be able to make a guess). Kincaid’s language and style is incantatory, relying heavily on word and phrase repetition. Mostly, the effect is haunting, but some instances feel unnecessary and formulaic. This is a beautiful memoir in the tradition of similar unsentimental works such as Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking.
—Thomas
