Hw # 22

Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997

“ I could have said to my mother, You and I do not get along, I am too well, I am not a sick child, you cannot be a mother to a well child, you are a great person but you are very bad mother to a child who is not dying or in jail; but I did not say that.” – pg. 27 When I read this it made think of how you can see how much someone loves you or cares about you when you are sick or ill. And in Jamaica’s case this was the only time her mother showed her love.

“ I told him to use condoms when having sex with anyone; I told him to protect himself from the HIV virus and he laughed at me and said that he would never get such a stupid thing (“Me no get dat chupidness, man.”)” – pg. 8 This quote reminded me how some people think their invincible and in their mind think, “ Oh that’ll never happen to me.” And when it does it takes us a while, like Jamaica’s brother or like Beth’s husband to accept the truth about our health.

“ It was then I decided that only people in Antigua died, that people living in other places did not die and as soon as I could, I would move somewhere else, to hose places where the people living there did not die.” – pg. 26 In other words, Jamaica when in her home with her family, death did not exist and it seemed like it never would in her “world.” But standing next to her brother in Antigua death became a reality for her and it frightened her, so much she mentioned several time how she just wanted be back home with her husband and kids.

How Jamaica dealt with the fact that her brother was dying due to Aids, I found was significant because for the first time she was bonding with the family (especially with her brother) she had tried to avoid most of her life. And when she finally did, she was hit by many emotions like the love she felt for her brother and having to face death when she had been avoiding it most of her life in the comfort of her home. I believe that when people find out someone of their own blood is ill or dying, even if they haven’t talked to this person in years they reach out to them. Or at least in Jamaica's case and mine. As a child, I never heard my father talk to or about his father but one day I saw that my father look different, more old, tired and weary than his usual self. And then a week after my mother told me that my father was going away to Mexico to my grandfather’s funeral. A man who I had never met or heard much about. But just like Jamaica, once my father heard his father was ill he went to his native land to see him in his last days. I would like to know whether if it was just something in common between my family's life and Jamaica’s or is it true for majority of people?