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Book Reviewed by:In luminous, incisive prose, a startling new literary talent explores masculinity, race, and sexuality against a backdrop of simmering violence during the summer of 1991.
One sweltering summer in the Park, a housing complex outside of Toronto, Michael and Francis are coming of age and learning to stomach the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry. While their Trinidadian single mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home, Francis helps the days pass by inventing games and challenges, bringing Michael to his crew's barbershop hangout, and leading escapes into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves.
Propelled by the beats and styles of hip hop, Francis dreams of a future in music. Michael's dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow.
Honest and insightful in its portrayal of kinship, community, and lives cut short, David Chariandy's Brother is an emotional tour de force that marks the arrival of a stunning new literary voice.
The world around us was named Scarborough. It had once been called "Scarberia," a wasteland on the outskirts of a sprawling city. But now, as we were growing up in the early '80s, in the heated language of a changing nation, we heard it called other names: Scarlem, Scarbistan. We lived in Scar-bro, a suburb that had mushroomed up and yellowed, browned, and blackened into life. Our neighbours were Mrs. Chandrasekar and Mr. Chow, Pilar Fernandez and Clive "Sonny" Barrington. They spoke different languages, they ate different foods, but they were all from one colony or the other, and so they had a shared vocabulary for describing feral children like us. We were "ragamuffins." We were "hooligans" up to no good "gallivanting." We were what one neighbour, more poet than security guard, described as "oiled creatures of mongoose cunning," raiding dumpsters and garbage rooms or climbing up trees and fire-exit stairs to spy on ...
For a book set in 1991 and 2001, Brother is remarkably timely. Chariandy explores the harm racist and xenophobic attitudes can have on an individual, and on a community as a whole, and how law enforcement, rather than acting to improve such a community, can become a violent and oppressive presence. It is a plaintive and gripping representation of the loss of life and dignity that results when certain people in society are viewed as expendable - an urgent plea for empathy...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
Kiese Laymon, author ofLong Division and Heavy
Marks the beginning of an absolutely mammoth literary talent. Marlon James, Man Booker Prizewinning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings
A brilliant, powerful elegy ... pulsing with rhythm, and beating with life.
As a young teen, Michael (in David Chariandy's Brother) begins spending time at the neighborhood barbershop, Desirea's, with his older brother and his friends. In the book, just as in life, black men visit the barbershop not just for haircuts, but to share their personal lives, discuss current events, listen to music and just relax with their neighbors and friends.
In an ode to the barbershop published in Fader magazine, a journalist quotes a friend: "In a lot of ways barbers are our therapists. The shop is where I learned what being a black man was about early on," adding that there are "not many places that all men got together and could talk freely." Fader also published interviews with five black barbers from across the United States...
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At times, our own light goes out, and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
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