My Brother
Jamaica Kincaid
08 August 2024
9781529077087160 pages
Synopsis
‘Controlled and fearless perfection’ - The Washington Post
Jamaica Kincaid's brother Devon Drew died of AIDS on 19 January 1996, at the age of thirty-three. This incantatory, poetic, and often shockingly frank recounting of her brother's life and death is also the story of her family on the island of Antigua, a constellation centered on her powerful, sometimes threatening mother. My Brother is an unblinking record of a life that ended too early, and it speaks volumes about the difficult truths at the heart of all families.
My Brother was a 1997 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.
Controlled and fearless perfectionCarolyn See, Washington Post
A sustained meditation on the grinding wheel of family, with mother always at the hub; on the countries of our past, both real and emotional, which we have fled and in which we have felt like strangers; on death as a devastating injury and dying as an irritating inconvenience . . . a memoir about death that portrays it as it is, not as we would have it be, as we so often tailor it both in memoir and fictionAnna Quindlen, New York Times Book Review
Visceral and wrenching, this is a memoir of mourning . . . Kincaid's revelations are both intoxicating and redeemingRené Graham, Boston Sunday Globe
