My Brother Book

In 1995 Jamaica Kincaid found out that her brother Devon was dying of AIDS in Antigua. Although she hardly knew him--in fact, she had distanced herself from her family after departing the island as a teenager--she soon returned and began visiting him in the hospital. My Brother is a record of this precarious, overdue rapprochement. More to the point, though, it is a rumination on family, grief, language and the almost impenetrable mystery that each person represents to others. Kincaid's prose is as musical and evocative as ever, and given the subject matter, this memoir is often surprisingly funny. When her mother denies ever having made a mistake while raising her children, for example, the author notes: "Even now, years later, I am still surprised by this, because I spend a good part of my day on my knees in apology to my own children."Read More