My Brother — Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid's brother Devon Drew died of AIDS on January 19, 1996, at the age of thirty-three. The youngest of four children, highly intelligent, well read, and a gifted athlete, he had been involved in a murder at the age of fourteen, lived as a Rastafarian, and was heavily immersed in the drug culture. A dreamer who aroused both love and anger, he died painfully and alone in his mother's house.Kincaid's incantatory, poetic, and often shockingly frank recounting of her brother's life is also the story of her family on the island of Antigua, a constellation centered on the powerful, sometimes threatening figure of the writer's mother. Kincaid's unblinking record of a life that ended too early speaks volumes about the difficult truths at the heart of all families.