"From My Brother" / 483

In a review of her book, My Brother (1977), Peter Kurth of Salon Magazine quotes Jamaica Kincaid speaking about her brother who died of AIDS: "He was not meant to be silent. [...] he was a brilliant boy, a brilliant man. Locked up in him was someone who would have spoken to the world in an important way... But he was not even remotely aware of such a person inside him" (http://www.salonmag.com/books/sneaks/1997/10/09review.html). Kincaid writes about her brother and the cultural differences between herself and her mother. She asks herself who her brother is and what he wanted to say about what he was experiencing. She writes:

When I saw my brother lying in the hospital bed, dying of this disease, his eyes were closed, he was asleep (or in a state of something like sleep, because sleep, a perfectly healthy and normal state to be in, could not be what he was experiencing as he lay there dying); his hands were resting on his chest, one on top of the other, just under his chin in that pious prose of the dead, but he was not dead then. (486)

Kincaid shares what she remembers and what she sees. And she combines these things with what she thinks she hears her brother saying in translation to her. Her brother’s illness and cultural difference is translated. But the reader is left to decide whether or not the translation is accurate and if there is any additional hidden meaning there.

The New York Times has highlighted the role of memory in this piece (http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/19/reviews/971019.19quindlt.html). My Brother is a lesson in constructing a memoir just as much as it is a investigation of dying with AIDS.Are the ants that nearly devoured young Kincaid's brother in Antigua when he was a newborn a foreshadowing of the microbes eating away his insides at the end of his life?

This is an amazing piece of writing. Salon Magazine's interview with Kincaid alludes to it's brilliance (http://www.salon.com/05/features/kincaid.html). Don't forget the critical readings for this piece either. Additional biographical information can be found at http://www.cc.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Kincaid.html.

Also review the critical readings.