Rating: 
Summary: A Complicated Work
Review: I'm still thinking through the issues raised in "My Brother" -- and I suspect that it will be one of those books which, though it feels a bit hollow as I read it, will turn out to haunt me in the future. Only time will tell. The most remarkable thing about it, I think, is the way that Kincaid refuses to valorize any of the characters she describes. The incredible ire towards her mother is the only emotion that feels puzzling, given the lack of context for it -- I kept waiting for a revelation there that never came. With this exception, however, Kincaid seems committed to presenting a balanced portrayal: she does not heroize the dead, nor does she portray herself as particularly wise or noble in the face of death. It is this commitment to a human, complex portrayal that makes the description unique.I just want to add that I am only posting this to counteract what appears to be a long list of high school book reports that make up most of the "reviewing" on this page. ...
Rating:
Summary: the book was okay
Review: it was kind of sad from the beging to end but she did try to help her brother a lot and she really wented to be there fore him so she did want she can do for him.while he was alive.
Rating: 
Summary: Jamica Kincaid, a story of family and loss
Review: Jamaica Kincaid tells the story of her ill brother and his encounters with the virus HIV. The story has the title of My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid. The story is essentially written to save Jamaica's own life. Whenever there is a tragic happening in her family, she writes about to let her feelings out and she also tries to exclude herself from her family. She moves away from Antigua once she became old enough to do so. Jamaica goes through sever years without connection to her mother and her siblings. Jamaica struggles to find feelings for her sick and dying brother as he spends his last days in an old run down hospital in Antigua. Jamaica is only able to let her own feelings out in a comfortable manner to Dr. Prince Ramsey. Jamaica is unable to communicate with her own mother. This is due to Jamaica's feeling that her mother was only a mother at certain times. Jamaica is driven on the idea that her mother only wants to care for her children if they were sick or in need of caring. Any time other than that, Jamaica thinks she had a poor mother. Jamaica is pleased however with few things her mother did. When Jamaica was only fifteen years old, she was forced to look after her younger brother who was only age two. She decided to read her books all day long and decided that looking after her younger brother was not a number one priority. Jamaica realized at the end of her reading that her mother would be home soon so she tried to clean up the things she thought her mother would realize first. One of these things was her brothers diaper but Jamaica did not have enough time to change so once her mother found this out, she took all of Jamaica's books, took them outside, doused them with kerosene, and burned them all, every last book. Jamaica recalls this event as driving her to become a written to make up for all for all of the books that she had lost at a young age.
Throughout the book Jamaica conveys her struggle to find love for her dying brother, Devon Drew. She never was close at all to her younger brother and as her brother became more sick, Jamaica knew she need to do something to redeem her self for all of the years she was absent in the presence of her brother. On page 72, Jamaica and her mother have a conversation about bringing her brother the medicine that prolonged his life several months more. Her mother said to her that god would bless her richly for providing her brother with the medicine, AZT. Jamaica was not sure if what her mother said was true but she was really not concerned with gods or being richly blessed. Jamaica was constantly thinking about how her brother was sick and how much Antiguan society shunned HIV positive people. Even though her brother was feeling better from the AZT, Jamaica knew that eventually her brother would die. On January 19th, 1996, at the age of thirty-three, Devon Drew died.
At certain times throughout the story, Jamaica thinks that it is perhaps better if her brother would just die, but when Devon was no more, Jamaica did not know what to feel. At certain points throughout the story, Jamaica feels that Devon is becoming a burden to her, making fly from her home in Vermont to Antigua, every time her brother needed more AZT. On page 87 she states that it seemed that his dying was a good thing, she was relieved when her brother finally did die. She says " when that moment came, the moment I knew he was no longer alive, I didn't know what to think, I didn't know how to feel" I think that this sentence conveys the struggle Jamaica has internally about her brothers illness and about how she felt about him when he was alive. During the story Jamaica also remembers the death of her father. She got word of his death right around Christmas time and she felt increasingly depressed. On page 119 Jamaica says " In the letter telling me that my father is (that is, the man who was not really my father but whom played I thought of as my father, and the man who had filled that role in my life) had died, my mother said his death left them impoverished, that she had been unable to pay for his burial, and the only charitable of others allowed him to have an ordinary burial, not an extraordinary burial of a pauper, with its anonymous grave and which no proper mourners attend". Throughout the second half of the book, Jamaica demonstrates her increasing anger toward her father and her brother. She becomes very angered at the thought of anyone dying and she keeps feeling that she really did not care about the loss of her father, only how to try and make up for the lost time with her brother, who in retrospect never really seemed to love Jamaica as a sister, just perhaps someone who provided him life with more AZT. Jamaica has difficulty dealing with all of the tragic experiences that has happened to her family, that is why one could feel that Jamaica isolated herself from her family. She feels that at certain times throughout the book she feels that perhaps she is to blame for being in the absence of her ill brother.
One could feel that Jamaica Kincaid does represent a hero but in defined terms. At times the only reason she is able to provide her brother with AZT is because she has had a better life than the rest of her family and she also has more money than the rest of her family. She tries her hardest to find love for her brother, even though she really cannot relate to any of his problems. She buys him temporary relief with the AZT medicine, but she knows that is not enough to make up for all of the lost years she had been without her brother. One might not necessarily think that Jamaica wanted to reconnect with her brother and the rest of her family, one might think that she just wanted to see him again before he died. While visiting her brother the experiences Jamaica had with her mother did make her more stressed out and more prone to mental and physical breakdowns. One could say that Jamaica did triumph all of the death and stress that was associated with her mother and the rest of her family.
One cold imagine that this story is heartfelt at times and a very good read. Some parts of the story were somewhat confusing when Jamaica puts things like my father (not my father but my brother's father) in parentheses. It seems as though she does want a mother and father but at times is seems as though Jamaica knows that maybe they do not want to be parents to her. This book is touching on several levels and anyone who has family members who are sick can relate to this book. This book was moving and really from the heart (of Jamaica Kincaid). One could feel that this book could be given to almost anyone and that person would be moved emotionally as well as physically. This book tells the story of hardship and death a young girl inspired to write her feelings in order to save her own life. Jamaica was inspired by the acts of her mother burning the few items she truly loved in live. Her books. She is familiar with the act of saving herself, so when she found out her brother was sick and dying. She started to write she knew that was the only was to understand his sickness, and she also began to write so she would not die with him. This book was amazing and is truly one of the best works of all times. It deals with emotion and real life situations. One feels that anyone who wants to learn the story of a girl who overcame the impoverished life of her family and the way Jamaica tried to save her own brother even when she could not relate to him, and she did with grace and inner strength that is unprecedented and amazing. She tried to keep a smile on her face and have a strong heart through it all.
Rating: 
Summary: Trite and predictable.
Review: Jamaica Kincaid's self-hatred runs through all of her work. But this book makes clear and unequivocal her hatred for her own culture. Same old same old; nothing new happening here.
Rating:
Summary: My Brother, a beautiful account
Review: Jamaica Kinkaid's book My Brother, is an emothional, poetic, and surprisingly frank account of the life and death of her brother, Devon. Not only is this book about her brother, but it is also about the many hardships her family experienced in her birthplace of Antigua. Although there are many aspects about this book that may disturb readers, overall it is a wonderful book that keeps readers interested from beginning to end.
Living a normal life in Vermont with her husband and children. Jamaica receieves a phone call from a friend in Antigua. Her youngest brother had been diagnosed with the AIDS virus. Jamaica is forced to leave her home and help her mother and brother who are poor and cannot afford treatment for the AIDS.
While back in Antigua, Jamaica is met by memories from her past. Memories of her mother who she no longer spoke to, and memories of her Rastafarian brother who live a life filled with drugs and unprotected sex. These all led up to him ultimately getting the AIDS virus and facing death.
Jamaica returns to see her brother who she hadn't seen in over 20 years, only to find him ill. The author (Jamaica) gruesomely describes the pain and symptoms he experiences during this time, and his developed dependance on his mother. Jamaica writes, "He lived in death." (p.88). For he did not live besides the fact that he ate and breathed. Ultimately she knew he would eventually die.
The entire scond half of the book is based on a time after his death. Jamaic writes about her feelings toward her brother feelings toward the dead, and the affect her brother's death had on the people in his life. Jamaica writes beautifully about death. Her writing is poetic, and she makes many profound comments. She wrote My Brother as a way to cope with and understand his death. Even though she barely knew him or for that matter loved him.
Jamaica Kincaid writes beautifully, poeticly and thruthfully frank. It is a great book that makes you think about life and death. It is not a p[articularly easy read. The writer goes off on tangents which can be confusing. But that is because she wanted to fit in all details. Her frankness with the subject and use of dialect in her writing makes this book real. It's a good read and beautifully done.
Rating:
Summary: ENIGMATIC
Review: Kincaid is one of the pillars of American literature at present. Her AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MY MOTHER was nominated for the prestigious Dublin-IMPAC Award, and a widely-praised writer. Her brother, Devon Drew, died of AIDS at a very young age (he was only thirty-three). He was an intelligent, charming young person, and a dreamer who could have been something. He died, however, as an unknown, "of a disease that had a great shame attached to it."
Their mother is a powerful and, at times, threatening figure. She, of course, is the central character of this biography (despite the fact that its title suggests otherwise). What she did in the past (The burning of Kincaid's books when she was a child) consumes a quarter of "My Brother".
I found the MY BROTHER frustrating when I first read it (In fact, I wrote an earlier review trumpeting how bad it is). But this is a very confronting, powerful book, and worth reading. One that is enigmatic, and humane underneath
Rating: 
Summary: Not My Brother, But My Mother's Son
Review: My Brother is a novel by Jamaica Kincaid. It tells the story of the author and her younger brother, an outgoing, sexually charged Rastafarian man who is HIV positive and dying from the AIDS virus in his early 30's. The author also shares many memories from her childhood on the island of Antigua, the island on which her mother and brothers reside in the book. The story is slow moving, dull, repetitive and contains many of the author's rambling thoughts on gardening. Some sentences are even up to 156 words long. There is not much of a plot either. This book is not worth the effort to comprehend how the author can be so arrogant and insensitive towards her family.
It is no secret that Devon (the author's brother) dies in this biographical account of the author's family. The book is not separated in chapters, but in two parts: when Devon was alive and after his death. In Part One, it could be said that Jamaica (the author, if Jamaica is her real name the reader does not know, for she says that she changed her name after moving to the U.S. from Antigua) is her brother's hero. When he is in the hospital and dying, she gets him a prescription for AZT, the drug that will not save his life, but may prolong it. Her family express gratitude and she seems proud of her involvement in Devon's treatment. In some cases, she seems more like a mother than a sister. Not a very good mother, but a mother all the same. For example, when Devon gains one pound during his hospital stay, she takes a whole page explaining how proud she was. She was not proud of Devon, she was proud of herself. In her mind, she was the reason that Devon gained that pound.
The author's arrogance and selfishness overpower the positive and negative moments that should bring a family together. Instead, Jamaica proceeds to tear her family apart by separating herself from her mother and Devon. She never makes interactions with her two other brothers, and while she spends a great deal of the book in Antigua, she seems to be wishing that she were back home in Vermont with her husband and children. She also spends a great deal of time repeating how she is not speaking to her mother, how her father, the man who raised her, was not her biological father, or how she feels that her family is not her family at all. She has many different titles for her mother, one of which is "my brother's mother", which is confusing because she also refers to her brothers as "my mother's sons."
One of the most unexplainable things about this book is how the author says, countless times that she did not love her brother. This could be believable because his name (Devon) is not even mentioned until page 99. It is almost as if she must make herself believe that Devon has done something wrong and must be punished so as not to make herself feel guilty for not kissing or hugging him goodbye the last time that she saw him alive. She cared about Devon, and she even goes so far as to say that he loved her.
Jamaica Kincaid wrote this book while sitting atop her high horse in Vermont USA, looking down on her family and ignoring their feelings when they needed her most. Jamaica Kincaid and her writing of My Brother do not deserve prizes or positive recognition. Not only was this novel sloppy and unsatisfying, but the author's view and opinions were unapologetic when any real human being would feel terrible for treating family this way.
Rating:
Summary: Not My Brother, But My Mother's Son
Review: My Brother is a novel by Jamaica Kincaid. It tells the story of the author and her younger brother, an outgoing, sexually charged Rastafarian man who is HIV positive and dying from the AIDS virus in his early 30's. The author also shares many memories from her childhood on the island of Antigua, the island on which her mother and brothers reside in the book. The story is slow moving, dull, repetitive and contains many of the author's rambling thoughts on gardening. Some sentences are even up to 156 words long. There is not much of a plot either. This book is not worth the effort to comprehend how the author can be so arrogant and insensitive towards her family.
It is no secret that Devon (the author's brother) dies in this biographical account of the author's family. The book is not separated in chapters, but in two parts: when Devon was alive and after his death. In Part One, it could be said that Jamaica (the author, if Jamaica is her real name the reader does not know, for she says that she changed her name after moving to the U.S. from Antigua) is her brother's hero. When he is in the hospital and dying, she gets him a prescription for AZT, the drug that will not save his life, but may prolong it. Her family express gratitude and she seems proud of her involvement in Devon's treatment. In some cases, she seems more like a mother than a sister. Not a very good mother, but a mother all the same. For example, when Devon gains one pound during his hospital stay, she takes a whole page explaining how proud she was. She was not proud of Devon, she was proud of herself. In her mind, she was the reason that Devon gained that pound.
The author's arrogance and selfishness overpower the positive and negative moments that should bring a family together. Instead, Jamaica proceeds to tear her family apart by separating herself from her mother and Devon. She never makes interactions with her two other brothers, and while she spends a great deal of the book in Antigua, she seems to be wishing that she were back home in Vermont with her husband and children. She also spends a great deal of time repeating how she is not speaking to her mother, how her father, the man who raised her, was not her biological father, or how she feels that her family is not her family at all. She has many different titles for her mother, one of which is "my brother's mother", which is confusing because she also refers to her brothers as "my mother's sons."
One of the most unexplainable things about this book is how the author says, countless times that she did not love her brother. This could be believable because his name (Devon) is not even mentioned until page 99. It is almost as if she must make herself believe that Devon has done something wrong and must be punished so as not to make herself feel guilty for not kissing or hugging him goodbye the last time that she saw him alive. She cared about Devon, and she even goes so far as to say that he loved her.
Jamaica Kincaid wrote this book while sitting atop her high horse in Vermont USA, looking down on her family and ignoring their feelings when they needed her most. Jamaica Kincaid and her writing of My Brother do not deserve prizes or positive recognition. Not only was this novel sloppy and unsatisfying, but the author's view and opinions were unapologetic when any real human being would feel terrible for treating family this way.
Rating: 
Summary: Where's the story?
Review: Normally a fan of Jamaica Kincaid, this book was terribly disappointing. Kincaid tells the story of her brother's battle with AIDS . . . well, sort of tells it anyway. This book tells the reader surprisingly little about any story. Kincaid, wrapped up in age-old animosity toward her mother does not tell the story of her brother's fight with a deadly disease, or the story of her brother's death, or the story of her brother's life, or even her own story of how she dealt with all of this--all of which would have been fascinating stories had they been told. Kincaid's feelings toward her mother seem not quite unfounded to the reader but certainly a bit mysterious. There is deep conflict between the author and her mother but as readers we have only two or three explanations for the mother/daughter difficulty. If this were only mentioned in passing we could overlook this flaw, however, Kincaid is extremely hung up on the issue and the ill feelings toward her mother cloud the true story of the book (whatever that may be). Kincaid's style, usually quite interesting, was lacking in this book. Her wandering, redundant sentences build her excessively long and redundant paragraphs, which are full of distracting and also redundant parenthetical comments. However, the book is not without a few strong points. There are some good detailed descriptions--particularly of her brother's physical condition and of specific places. Kincaid also does a fine job of describing her various feelings when she realizes toward the end of the book that she knew her brother even less than she had previously thought (and she never claimed to know much about him to begin with). My advice is to pass this book by and pick up one of Kincaid's novels, or--even better--get your hands on one of her short stories.
Rating:
Summary: Where's the story?
Review: Normally a fan of Jamaica Kincaid, this book was terribly disappointing. Kincaid tells the story of her brother's battle with AIDS . . . well, sort of tells it anyway. This book tells the reader surprisingly little about any story. Kincaid, wrapped up in age-old animosity toward her mother does not tell the story of her brother's fight with a deadly disease, or the story of her brother's death, or the story of her brother's life, or even her own story of how she dealt with all of this--all of which would have been fascinating stories had they been told. Kincaid's feelings toward her mother seem not quite unfounded to the reader but certainly a bit mysterious. There is deep conflict between the author and her mother but as readers we have only two or three explanations for the mother/daughter difficulty. If this were only mentioned in passing we could overlook this flaw, however, Kincaid is extremely hung up on the issue and the ill feelings toward her mother cloud the true story of the book (whatever that may be). Kincaid's style, usually quite interesting, was lacking in this book. Her wandering, redundant sentences build her excessively long and redundant paragraphs, which are full of distracting and also redundant parenthetical comments. However, the book is not without a few strong points. There are some good detailed descriptions--particularly of her brother's physical condition and of specific places. Kincaid also does a fine job of describing her various feelings when she realizes toward the end of the book that she knew her brother even less than she had previously thought (and she never claimed to know much about him to begin with). My advice is to pass this book by and pick up one of Kincaid's novels, or--even better--get your hands on one of her short stories.
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