My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid published by Farrar Straus and Giroux in 1997 is about this woman’s ill brother, Devon. Devon lives in Antigua and is dying from AIDs. Jamaica lives in the United States reveals that she doesn’t like the Antiguan culture. She doesn’t know her brother very well but his sickness has influenced her to go see him back in her home country. The awareness about HIV and AIDs is very low in Antigua and the health care is very atypical of how American hospitals are run. Jamaica brings a drug called AZT from the states for her to take (since they don’t have this drug on the island) she also brings stronger doses of several other meds to make Devon feel better.
“I had said to him that nothing good ever could come of his being so ill, but all the same I wanted to thank him for making me realize that I loved him” pg. 21
-This is an example of how feeling like you are losing someone or being guaranteed you won’t
have them around for your whole life makes you grateful for their presence.
“…he had no children, as he lay dying, his friends had abandoned him. No one, other than the people in his family and his mother’s friends from her church, came to visit him” pg 14
-I think this sheds a light on the cultural values of how one is expected to have a room full of visitors/ spectators when their death is near.
“I missed him. I missed seeing him suffer. I missed felling sorry that in the midst of some large thing and hoping he would emerge from it changed for the better. I did not love him.” Pg 57-58
-I think it is interesting that she doesn’t think she loves him any more yet at the beginning she was sure of it and very profound about her love towards him. I think that maybe because he is getting better she is starting to feel less sorry and she is no longer repressing feelings of anger towards Devon.
Well in this case the majority of the immediate family was brought together. Devon is staying in this crappy hospital, (which happens to be the one for the poorer people on the island). The room is filthy and there are no flowers or photos or anything of that sort. He is also placed in his own room, the fan is thick with dust the floors have stains and the windowsills have sot. The author made a note to exemplify that her brother was intentionally isolated from all the other patients who aren’t sick with HIV. The family seems to be very real when they are with him they acknowledge his illness but I don’t feel that they baby him extraordinarily. When Devon is feeling well enough to leave the “hospital” (which isn’t stocked with typical meds like Tylenol) he moves in with his mother and sleeps in the same bed as her which I found to be a little odd almost as if he is going back to being a child. Jamaica talks about how her mother is only a good mother to her offspring if they are babies, sick or in jail. It seems to me that while Devon is home his mother is being overly helpful and is crossing boundaries that we have in our culture.
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