Historical Context

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Antigua is a small island in the West Indies, measuring twelve miles in length and nine miles in width. Christopher Columbus arrived on the island in 1493 and named it after the Church of Santa Maria de la Antigua in Sevilla, Spain. Shortly thereafter, Antigua was settled by the Spanish, French, and British. In 1667, it officially became a British colony under the Treaty of Breda.

During Kincaid's childhood, Antigua was still under British governance. However, on February 27, 1967, it gained self-governing status and was known as an Associated State of Britain for the next fourteen years. In 1981, Antigua achieved independence as a nation within the Commonwealth. Due to its long history as a British outpost, the educational system in Antigua was modeled after the British system. This explains why Kincaid and her brother Devon both admire John Milton, and Devon's favorite sport is cricket. In an interview with the New York Times, Kincaid remarked, “In my generation, the height of being a civilized person was to be English and to love English things and eat like English people. We couldn’t really look like them, but we could approximate being an English person.”

In A Small Place, Kincaid reminisces that May 24th, Queen Victoria's birthday, was celebrated as a holiday in Antigua. Despite the fact that the birthday of this unappealing figure held no real significance for Antiguans, they were simply grateful for a day off work. Later in life, when Kincaid finds herself at a dinner party with an Englishman who also laments celebrating the meaningless event, she retorts that at least he understood Queen Victoria was dead. In her impassioned book, Kincaid asserts that she has no language other than that of the oppressor, and that her speech is constructed to express the Englishmen’s viewpoints. She believes that English cannot adequately convey the horror, injustice, and suffering inflicted by the oppressors.

One of Kincaid's distinctive themes is exploring the complex and ambivalent emotions the colonized feel toward the colonizers. This theme is evident in her fiction as well as in her memoir My Brother. She recalls that Devon was fascinated with “the great hero–thieves of English maritime history: Horatio Nelson, John Hawkins, Francis Drake... he believed (as do I) that our history was primarily a record of theft and murder (‘Dem tief, dem a dam tief’), but presented in such a way as to make the account seem inevitable and even enjoyable... he admired the victors, even though he was among the spoils.”

Kincaid explores the peculiarities of Antigua in A Small Place. She portrays her birthplace as chaotically disorganized. For example, a sign stating the library was damaged in the 1974 earthquake and awaiting repairs remained there for over ten years, even though no repairs occurred. However, she believes it's unfair to criticize contemporary Antigua without acknowledging that the country's current state is a result of Antiguans enduring the oppressive and infantilizing effects of colonialism for an extended period.

Literary Style

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Diction
The way each family member speaks reveals much about them. Kincaid’s writing is formal and somewhat detached, with meticulously crafted sentences that starkly contrast with the casual island speech of her mother and brothers. Devon communicates in an island dialect, referring to AIDS as ‘‘de chupidness.’’ Kincaid struggles to understand her brother, often asking him to repeat himself, while he finds her manner of speaking amusing.

Metaphor
Diction serves as a metaphor for the divide between Kincaid and her family. The cruelty she experienced in childhood has now manifested as adult illness, a physical representation of the psychological pain she and her brothers endure. Devon is terminally ill,...

(This entire section contains 529 words.)

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and after Kincaid’s mother visits her in the United States, Kincaid recalls, ‘‘I was sick for three months. I had something near to a nervous breakdown, I suffered from anxiety and had to take medicine to treat it; I got the chicken pox, which is a disease of childhood and a disease I had already had when I was a child.’’

In Kincaid’s memoir, metaphors sometimes take unexpected turns. Upon discovering her brother might have been a closeted homosexual, she envisions his life as a flower that never bloomed, the bud withering and falling at her feet. The failure of this metaphor to fully convey its intended meaning troubles her. ‘‘But the feeling that his life, with its metaphor of the bud of a flower firmly set, blooming, and then the blossom fading, the flower setting a seed which bore inside another set of buds, leading to flowers, and so on and so on into eternity—this feeling that his life actually should have provided such a metaphor, so ordinary an image, so common and so welcoming had it been just so, could not leave me . . .’’

While Kincaid employs metaphor throughout her memoir, she remains wary of its potential to lead to exaggerated or incorrect conclusions. When she hears the zipper of the bag containing her deceased brother Devon, she likens it to the sound of a dangerous reptile announcing its presence.

Style
In a 1997 New York Times review of My Brother, Anna Quindlen illustrates Kincaid’s writing style: ‘‘The stylistic ground she covers in this book is also recognizable from her past work, the endless incantatory sentences a contrast to the simple words and images—a tower built of small bricks.’’ Kincaid’s style is marked by a relentless pursuit of truth, coupled with an acknowledgment that ultimate truth may be elusive. By frequently reminding readers of seemingly obvious facts—such as Kincaid’s husband being the father of her children or her mother being the mother of her brothers—she emphasizes that nothing should be assumed; everything requires scrutiny and verification.

Repetition in her writing reflects the uncertainty of where one's thoughts might lead. When Kincaid is most conflicted, her repetition is most pronounced. ‘‘My talk was full of pain, it was full of misery, it was full of anger, there was no peace to it, there was much sorrow, but there was no peace to it.’’ In this single sentence, Kincaid twice underscores that discussing her brother and his illness brings her no peace.

Media Adaptations

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My Brother has been transformed into an audiobook narrated by Jamaica Kincaid. This audiobook has a total duration of 360 minutes and was released by Penguin Audiobooks.

Bibliography and Further Reading

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Sources: ‘‘Don’t Mess with Gardener and Author Jamaica Kincaid,’’ in Boston Globe, June 20, 1996.

Garis, Leslie, ‘‘Through West Indian Eyes,’’ in New York Times, October 7, 1990, p. 42.

Garner, Dwight, ‘‘Jamaica Kincaid,’’ in Salon, November 8, 1995.

Goldfarb, Brad, ‘‘My Brother,’’ in Interview, Vol. 27, No. 10, October 1997, p. 94.

Hartman, Diane, Review, in Denver Post, December 7, 1997.

Kerr, Sarah, ‘‘The Dying of the Light,’’ in Slate, October 21, 1997.

Lopate, Phillip, Introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay, Doubleday, 1994.

Quindlen, Anna, ‘‘The Past is Another Country,’’ in New York Times, October 19, 1997.

Skow, John, Review, in Time, Vol. 150, No. 20, November 10, 1997, p. 108.

Snell, Marilyn, ‘‘Jamaica Kincaid Hates Happy Endings,’’ in Mother Jones, September–October 1997.

Further Reading
Bloom, Harold, ed., ‘‘Jamaica Kincaid,’’ in Caribbean Women Writers, Chelsea House, 1997, pp. 104–116. This overview of Kincaid’s work was written before the publication of My Brother.

Graham, Renee, ‘‘A Death in the Family: Jamaica Kincaid’s Wrenching, Incantatory Story of her Brother Devon,’’ in Boston Globe, November 2, 1997, p. N1. Graham describes Kincaid’s memoir as one of ‘‘unsparing honesty’’ in this detailed review of her book.

Hainley, Bruce, ‘‘My Brother,’’ in Artforum, Vol. 36, No. 3, November 1997, p. S27. In this book review of My Brother, Hainley compares Kincaid to writers Michel Leiris and Elizabeth Bishop.

Kaufman, Joanne, ‘‘Jamaica Kincaid: An Author’s Unsparing Judgments Earn Her an Unwanted Reputation for Anger,’’ in People Weekly, Vol. 48, No. 24, December 15, 1997, p. 109. This interview with Kincaid following the nomination of My Brother for a National Book Award touches on topics ranging from Tina Brown, editor of The New Yorker, to Kincaid’s family history, her conversion to Judaism, and her passion for gardening.

Kurth, Peter, ‘‘My Brother: A Memoir,’’ in Salon, October 9, 1997. Kurth’s book review focuses on Kincaid’s relationship with her mother, comparing My Brother to The Autobiography of My Mother.

Bibliography

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Brophy, Sarah. “Angels in Antigua: The Disaporic of Melancholy in Jamaica Kincaid’s My Brother.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 117, no. 2 (March, 2002): 265-277. Explores the connection between melancholia and mourning. Questions whether Kincaid is mourning the loss of her youngest brother, whom she only saw at the beginning and the ending of his life, or her sadness and grief reflect her own lost opportunities mixed with survivor’s guilt.

Kaufman, Joanne. “Jamaica Kincaid: An Author’s Unsparing Judgments Earn Her an Unwanted Reputation for Anger.” People 48, no. 24 (December 15, 1997): 109-112. Powerlessness, this article suggests, is at the heart of Kincaid’s writings. On writing about her thirty-three-year-old brother’s death, she is quoted here saying, “We were both dreamers, both lived in our heads. I thought, ’This could be me.’”

Kincaid, Jamaica. “Jamaica Kincaid Hates Happy Endings.” Interview by Marilyn Snell. Mother Jones 22, no. 5 (September/October, 1997): 28-31. Refers to Kincaid’s “continuing obsessions.” Kincaid says she is more concerned with pursuing truth than with the happiness or sadness of that truth.

McDowell, Deborah E. “Darkness Visible.” Review of My Brother, by Jamaica Kincaid. Women’s Review of Books 15, no. 4 (January, 1998): 1-3. Makes the point that all books about death are also about life—about what the living make of it and how death affects them.

Page, Kezia. “What If He Did Not Have a Sister [Who Lived in the United States]? Jamaica Kincaid’s My Brother as Remittance Text.” Small Axe 21 (October, 2006): 37-53. In an argument based on the biblical line “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” the author suggests Kincaid’s writing is really a repayment: She pays with her writing for escaping her homeland and her most likely fate.

Wachman, Gay. “Dying in Antigua.” Review of My Brother, by Jamaica Kincaid. The Nation, November 3, 1997, 43-44. Refers to the death of Devon Drew, Jamaica Kincaid’s half brother, as “a memoir of a voice.”

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