Synopses & Reviews
Jamaica Kincaid's brother Devon Drew died of AIDS on January 19, 1996, at the age of thirty-three. Kincaid's incantatory, poetic, and often shockingly frank recounting of her brothers life and death is also a story of her family on the island of Antigua, a constellation centered on the powerful, sometimes threatening figure of the writers 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 is a 1997 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.
Review
Controlled and fearless perfection. -Carolyn See,
The Washington PostA 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 fiction. -Anna Quindlen, The New York Times Book Review
Visceral and wrenching, this is a memoir of mourning . . . Kincaid's revelations are both intoxicating and redeeming. -Renée Graham, The Boston Sunday Globe
About the Author
Jamaica Kincaid's books include
At the Bottom of the River,
Annie John,
A Small Place,
Lucy, and
The Autobiography of My Mother. She lives in Vermont.