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Brother
Brother
Brother
Ebook157 pages2 hours

Brother

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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"A brilliant, powerful elegy from a living brother to a lost one, yet pulsing with rhythm, and beating with life." --Marlon James

"Highly recommend Brother by David Chariandy--concise and intense, elegiac short novel of devastation and hope." --Joyce Carol Oates, via Twitter

WINNER--Toronto Book Award
WINNER--Rogers' Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
WINNER--Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction

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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 31, 2018
ISBN9781635572001
Brother
Author

David Chariandy

David Chariandy grew up in Toronto and lives and teaches in Vancouver. He is the author of the novels Soucouyant, which received nominations from eleven literary awards juries, and Brother, which won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Toronto Book Award, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Aspen Words Literary Prize and nominated for the 2019 Dublin Literary Award.

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Rating: 4.0708334299999995 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Powerful, bold and timely. "It wasn't just she alone. All around us in the park were mothers who had journeyed far beyond what they knew, who took day courses and worked nights, who dreamed of raising children who might have just a little more than than they did, children who might reward scsrifice and redeem a past. And there were victories, you must know. Fears were banished by the scents from simmering pots, denigration countered by a freshly laundered tablecloth. History beaten back by the provision of clothes and yearly school supplies. Examples were raised."Their mother came from Trinidad, but others in Toronto, in the housing unit called the Park came from many other places. She had to work three jobs, long bus rides, to take care of Frances and Michael. They had to raise themselves, learn how to navigate where they lived, stay away from those with bad reputations which would do them harm. Yet, she showed them beauty too, tired as she was, she took them for picnics at the creek, called Rouge. Showed then the monarch butterflies and other beauties of nature. She gave them hope that if they stayed out of trouble, they had a chance. Thdy had hope, until it was taken away.I discovered this book on Kirkuses list of books that were good but had been largely passed by. I finished this book with a big Wow, stunned by this story and the devestating turn it took, though at the end hope of a kind it once again found. The beauty of the writing, because believe me this young author can write! A timely subject, immigrants, refugees trying to circumvent a system that is stacked against them. The way they are viewed as unwanted, criminals in the making, as people who are taking away jobs and resources that should be awarded only to citizens. As I said, a powerfully bold book that deserves reading.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Growing up on the edge of the city and society - many years ago I read a Toronto Star article about life in Scarborough in which the reporter offhandedly mentioned that somewhere there is a young person distilling his life experience into the next great novel. This is it. .
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Intense, emotional story of family love in a harsh subculture.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    David Chariandy's first novel Soucouyant, 'was nominated for nearly every major literary prize in Canada and published internationally.' His second novel, Brother is recently released and it too is racking up accolades.Brother is the first reading of this author for me - and I was blown away....1991 Scarborough, Ontario. Michael and Francis are the children of Trinidadian immigrants, living with their mother in a housing complex in this urban center. Their mother dreams of more and better for her sons and works tirelessly to ensure this happens. The boys also imagine their futures. Francis in the music industry and Michael dreams of a life with Aisha, far from the concrete walls of 'The Park'.But in 1991 Scarborough, racial tensions are running high, violence is becoming part of everyday life, police presence is heavy and prejudices are rampant. Those hopes and dreams of the three members of this family are changed forever by the violence of that year.Brother is told in a back and forth timeline spanning ten years. In the present we learn about the past as the book progresses.Brother is a slim novel, but it took me a while to read it. I had to put the book down numerous times - to absorb and avoid the inevitability of what was coming next - even though I knew what that was. The story is real - and raw. Chariandy's prose are absolutely beautiful, drawing you in and wrapping themselves around you. I cried more than once as I read.As a mother, that is where I felt that punch the hardest - her hopes, dreams and desires for her children. And the undercurrent of the loss of her own wants and desires. Her perseverance, fortitude and strength resonated with me - even as it eroded and collided with ugly reality. I'm sickened by the indignities, attitudes and prejudices depicted. Even more so as I know they are not fiction. But those moments are juxtaposed and tempered by the acts of love, joy and happiness that also part of the life of this family.Brother speaks to the immigrant experience, to family, love, loss, hope, duty and desires. And the fact that the past is still the present. Absolutely, positively recommended reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Brother" is the story of brothers Michael and Francis who are being raised by their mother, a Trinidadian immigrant, in Scarborough, Toronto in the 80s and 90s. As they come of age in the hip hop scene, their world is turned upside down in the wake of a tragic shooting. Told through Michael's eyes, this novel expertly weaves the past with the present to tell this story of brotherly love. It's a short novel (less than 200 pages) and I found it flowed nicely and was very readable.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book written in 2017 is exactly how things are still similar in Toronto today. Maybe even worse in 2023. Very well written. Great book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In my opinion, this book is not a page turner. I agree that every book should not be a page turner, but this story could have easily benefited from more colorful dialogue and language. I wanted to see what happened, but found it easy to choose another book when sitting down to read. This doesn’t mean this isn’t a good story, it just isn’t gripping enough. I thank the author for this glimpse into the lives of people in different circumstances than mine. This is a good read, and taught me about something unfortunately foreign to me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Brother, by David Chariandy, is an important and timely novel. It is composed with language that is precise and rhythmic. It is a novel that jumps around in time quite a bit, and only provides the pieces which frame the story in the concluding chapters. Once assembled, the story is perhaps a bit thin.Largely, Brother is character driven and this is where it is strongest. As a character-focused reader, I thought the cast was great, but this 170-page novel didn't give ample room for everyone to be developed as much as I would've liked. I had a good sense of Michael and Francis, the main foci of the story, but would've appreciated more from secondary characters such as Jelly and Aisha.Overall, this is a good novel. My biggest critiques are that it is disjointed and not developed as fully as I would've liked, but the skeleton of a great story is here, and the life that pulsate through these pages is strong.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Brother has two storylines intertwined. One is a family’s life in 90s Scarborough Ontario leading up to the shooting death of the brother (not a spoiler). The other is how the mother and brother left behind have dealt with this loss ten years later. The sad part of the brother’s shooting is that it is still happening today. Marginalized brown and black youth like Francis feel trapped and hopeless about their futures amid seemingly inescapable institutionalized racism and unrelenting police scrutiny.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book has been chosen as one of the five for Canada Reads 2019. The theme for Canada Reads this year is One Book To Move You and I can see how it fits into the theme. I'm sure for some people, probably younger than me, it would really move them. I thought it was well-written but I can't say I was really moved by it.Michael is the younger son of a Trinidadian couple who emigrated to Canada before the children were born. Now Michael's mother, Ruth, is raising Michael and Francis on her own in a massive housing project in Scarborough. Ruth works at various cleaning jobs to provide for the boys. She is quite often bone-tired when she comes home but from a young age Francis tries to make her feel better. Both boys are often left on their own while their mother works. They live close to a ravine which becomes a place where they go to play. As the boys get older Francis starts hanging out with a group of boys who seem destined to run afoul of the police. Francis' close friend (and possibly more) Jelly is a gifted DJ and may have a chance at stardom. Unfortunately an encounter leaves Francis dead and his brother and mother are thrown into an extended period of grief. It is only the return of a neighbour girl who has made it good that brings a change to their lives.I liked the character of Aisha, the neighbourhood girl, but I never felt I quite got a handle on Francis and Michael. I also liked the musical references that flowed through the narrative. The neighbourhood also seemed a character in the book; I really felt like I had walked the streets. Ironically I believe the ravine that the boys and their mother explored is now one of the newest federal parks, Rouge National Urban Park.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A moving, sharply written story of two brothers growing up in a suburb of Toronto in the 1980s & 90s. This short novel uses a laser like attention to a few moments in the boys young life to create an intimate portrait of the lives of children of immigrants, struggling to make a life. Keenly focused in it's milieu, it uses this to create emotional connections in the reader that speak to universal desires, feelings and concerns.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a very powerful story about a family of Trinidadian immigrants living in Toronto. Ruth is a single mother, raising Francis and his younger brother, Michael. We see the boys growing up and becoming involved in the music scene. But we also see the darker side of racism, which many Canadians like to think isn't an issue here. The boys witness the killing of a young black man and are subsequently "profiled" by the police for possible involvement in criminal activity. What makes this story so moving is that we see the hopefulness of making a new life stolen away from Ruth and her boys. It is fiction, but all too often, mirrors fact.Very well written
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    In Brother, his second novel, David Chariandy describes the complex relationship of two brothers, Francis and Michael, sons of a Trinidadian mother who immigrated to Canada with hopes of becoming a nurse but who instead wore herself out with years of menial labour as she raised her boys on her own and tried to keep food on the table. The book is narrated by younger son Michael. Years after Francis’ death, the visit to the old neighbourhood of childhood friend Aisha has triggered Michael’s recollections of growing up in a crumbling and dangerous Toronto public housing complex. Michael, who has come of age on streets filled with criminal activity, drugs and gang violence, characterizes himself as artistically inclined and somewhat naïve. In his recollections, Francis, who as a teen aspired to a career in music, exudes confidence and mingles easily with the street crowd. Michael though is awkward and unsure of himself. The brothers grow up frequently unattended because their mother is working two or three jobs, and Francis assumes the role of his younger brother’s protector and defender, taking pains to shield Michael from both the coarser realities as well as the allure of the street culture in which they are immersed. Francis is initially tender and protective toward his mother, though he later grows distant and secretive. He is also quick to anger and doesn’t hesitate to use his fists, especially when drunk or high, and it is this volatility that gets him into trouble. At the time of Aisha’s visit, Michael, now in his twenties, still lives with his mother, who has never stopped mourning her elder son, though now their roles are reversed, and it is Michael doing the watching and protecting and worrying. Michael’s story of his brother’s short life builds to a violent and tragic climax, and along the way draws a portrait of a vital and self-sufficient community populated by immigrants that is neglected by and culturally isolated from the society that promised to welcome them with open arms, and which is often the target of police suspicion and harassment. Though Francis’ fate is inevitable, Chariandy builds suspense in expert fashion while telling an essential story of young people whose dreams and hopes for the future clash with social structures that seem designed to keep them firmly in their place.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Brother's real characters and their immigrant dream gone wrong made this book amazing. Chariandy's writing unfolds the storyline in a way that readers understand the feelings of each. I loved the Canadian touches to the book such as Tim Horton's and yet found a Canada that I didn't know existed. Chariandy opens a dark, authentic immigrant story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a remarkable little book! So much is said in so few words! It takes a special talent to be a minimalist writer and still get so much covered and said. This is a coming of age book about two brothers whose parents were Trinidadian immigrants to Canada. Francis and Michael are only a year apart, but Francis has always taken care of his little brother. Their father had left them when the boys were really young and their mother worked long hours trying to provide for them. The book takes place in Scarborough, Ontario in a mostly immigrant neighbourhood in the summer of 1991. Their mother has big plans for her boys having a chance at a good life, and works long hours to provide for them. But the influences of the gangs and criminals in and around their neighbourhood keep creeping into the boys' realm. Francis is drawn further and further into the gang life, until a tragedy occurs that rips Michael and his mom's world apart. With brilliant and spellbinding prose, Chariarty outlines this coming-of-age story about a young boy growing up in a hardscrabble and dangerous neighbourhood, and how the violence that exists outside the door, escalates and ends up breaking through and ripping the lives of families apart. I am totally in awe of the skill of this writer with this his first book, and so proud that he is another Canadian rising star in the writing world..
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A special thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada, and McClelland & Stewart for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.This gorgeous and powerful novel is the winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, longlisted for the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize, a Globe and Mail Best Book, and a Quill & Quire Best Book of 2017. Brother is a tight and compact novel that packs a huge punch. Chariandy explores questions of race, class, family, identity, and social standing. Set in a Scarborough housing complex during the summer of 1991, violence is at a peak as is the heat. Michael and Francis, the brothers, are the sons of Trinidadian immigrants. Their father has disappeared and to keep them afloat, their mother works double/triple shifts so that her boys have every opportunity in their adopted homeland.This coming-of-age story takes place in The Park—a cluster of town homes in the outskirts of one of Canada's major cities. The boys' options are limited as they battle against stereotypes, prejudices, poverty, and the low expectations that confront young black men; they are perceived as thieves from shopkeepers, less intelligent from their teachers, and strangers fear them. The brothers' only escape is the Rouge Valley, a lush green wilderness that perforates their neighbourhood, and it is here where they imagine a better life from what they are destined for.The boys witness a tragic shooting of an acquaintance, a boy named Anton, and they are handcuffed and roughed up by the police. The police crack down on hem, and in doing so, suffocate their hopes and dreams of a better life. It is this event that drives Francis' anger and pulls away from his family and into his gang—a group of boys who are interested the exploration of music in the form of hip hop in its infancy. Chariandy's novel is a devastatingly emotional piece. It opens ten years after the event that altered their family and left their mother constrained by grief. The family still live in the same rundown apartment although the roles are now reversed and it is Michael who is the caregiver to his mother in her fragile state. The narrative shifts between past and present and it is the sheer force of it that drives the story. Short in length, but lasting, this story will linger with the reader long after the last page is turned.

Book preview

Brother - David Chariandy

lose."

ONE

She’s come back. The bus pulling away from a rotting bank of snow to show her standing on the other side of the avenue. A neighbourhood girl no longer, a young woman now in heeled boots and a coat belted tight against the cold and dark. She’s carrying a backpack, not a suitcase, and this really is how she becomes Aisha. The way she shoulders her belongings with a rough and impatient gesture before stepping onto the asphalt and crossing the salt-stained lanes between us.

You’re not dressed for this weather, she says.

I’m okay. Just a short wait. You look good, Aisha.

She frowns but accepts from me a hug that lingers before we break apart and begin walking eastward, our chins hunched down against the wind tunnelling between the surrounding apartment towers. An oncoming car shocks bright her face and it’s true, she does look good. The same dark skin haunted with red, the same hair she once scorned as mongrel. But it’s been ten years since last we’ve spoken. And in the silence thick between us it feels like even the smallest dishonesty will ruin this reconnection. A truck blasts suddenly past us on the avenue, spraying slush on our pant legs and shoes. Aisha swears, but when our eyes meet she offers a thin smile.

Properly welcomed back, she says.

You do look a bit tired. I’ve made a bed for you.

Thank you, Michael. Thank you for offering me a place to stay. I’m sorry for not saying so sooner. My head these days. And you know me, I’ve never been good with favours.

She was overseas when she got the news that her father had been admitted into intensive care, and during her phone call to me she described how her mind instantly filled with panic but also vague anger. In his occasional letters to her, he had mentioned that he was feeling tired, but he had not admitted the cancer. She caught a long series of connecting flights to Toronto, and then a Greyhound bus to the hospice in Milton, the small town he had moved to only recently. She stayed with him for the week until the end, and there had been time to talk but not nearly enough. What was there to say? she asked me in a rough voice over the phone, the line hanging afterwards with a quiet impossible for me to fill. This call out of nowhere. Please visit, I said to her, doubt creeping into my voice even as I repeated myself. Come home to the Park.

The Park is all of this surrounding us. This cluster of low-rises and townhomes and leaning concrete apartment towers set tonight against a sky dull purple with the wasted light of a city. We are approaching the western edge of the Lawrence Avenue bridge, a monster of reinforced concrete over two hundred yards in length. Hundreds of feet beneath it runs the Rouge Valley, cutting its own way through the suburb, heedless of man-made grids. But the Rouge is invisible to us tonight, and we have just arrived at the Waldorf, a townhouse complex at the edge of the bridge and made of crumbling salmon brick, flapping blue tarps draped eternally over its northeast corner. The unit where Aisha lived ten years ago with her father is on the prized south of the building, away from traffic. But the side where I have remained all my life is at the busy edge of the avenue, exposed to the constant hiss of tires on asphalt. I warn Aisha about the loose concrete on the doorsteps and suffer a sudden bout of clumsiness working the brass key into the lock. I push open the door to show a living room lit blue with the shifting light of a television, its volume turned off. There is a couch with its back towards us, and on it there is a woman with greying hair who does not turn.

I gesture to Aisha that we should be quiet. I remove my shoes in a demonstrating way, and with our coats still on I quickly guide Aisha across the living room. The woman on the couch continues to watch the silent television, the mime of a talk-show interview, a celebrity guest throwing his head back in laughter. I lead Aisha down a short hallway to the second bedroom. A small lamp casting a circle of light upon a desk, a bunk bed with a mattress and sheets on the lower bed only, the upper bunk long ago stripped bare, even the mattress removed, leaving skeletal slats of wood. I close the door behind us and in the sudden smallness of the room begin explaining. We won’t be sleeping together on the bed, of course. I’ll be using the living room couch, which is quite comfortable, honestly. I point out the towel and extra blankets set out very obviously on the sheets of the lower bunk. I stop when I notice that Aisha is staring and that she hasn’t let her backpack touch the floor.

Your mother doesn’t speak anymore? she asks.

She speaks. She’s just quiet sometimes, especially at night.

I’m sorry, she says to me, shaking her head. I shouldn’t have come. This is an intrusion.

Bullets of slush smattering upon the bedroom window. Another truck that has passed too close to the curb outside. But in the wake of sudden noise, a feeling creeps upon me, one of shame, maybe, for imagining that I could try to end our conversation tonight like this. With talk of sleeping arrangements and towels. With acknowledgement of Aisha’s father, yet no acknowledgement of that other loss shadowing this room and measured in the ten years of silence between us.

I still think of Francis, she says.

Francis was my older brother. His was a name a toughened kid might boast of knowing, or a name a parent might pronounce in warning. But before all of this, he was the shoulder pressed against me bare and warm, that body always just a skin away.

Our mother had come from Trinidad, in what parents of her generation called the West Indies. It was a place that Francis and I, both born and raised here in Canada, had visited once and could recognize vaguely in words and sounds and tastes. It was a place that accounted for the presence in our house of certain drinks like mauby and sorrel and also the inexplicably named Peardrax, which Francis had once fooled me into believing was bathroom cleanser. Somehow, we felt that the West Indies made sense of other equally strange objects in our home, like the snow globe of Niagara Falls, or the lurking threat of Anne Murray’s Snowbird 45. It was a place populated by relatives we had met only briefly, who existed now in old black-and-white photographs, ghostly images that were supposed to explain our eyes and way of smiling, our hair and bones.

There was another old photograph in the house, one that Francis discovered when we were small, shelved secretly in Mother’s bedroom cupboard. It showed a man with a moustache groomed so carefully it looked painted on. He wore a thin light-coloured jacket, the open collar of his shirt slightly kinked up. Old words like suave and debonair came to mind, or at least they do now. This man was our father, who was also from the West Indies, and who now lived somewhere in the city, although he had left our home when Francis was three and I was only two. The photograph wasn’t perfectly focused, and I remember Francis and me as children looking hard into the blur of the man’s face for something recognizable. His skin was much darker than Mother’s, but we had been told that he was not black like her, but something called Indian—although this identity seemed lost in the poorness of the photograph, or in the trowel-thick application of Brylcreem in his hair, as artificial as the black snap-on do of Lego Man.

In truth, none of us, not me, Francis, or Mother, had much interest in the grey pasts of photographs. We had more than enough to explore right here and now, and most of all we had the running challenge of what our mother called opportunity. Mother worked as a cleaner in office buildings and malls and hospitals. She was also one of those black mothers, unwilling to either seek or accept help from others. Unwilling to suffer any small blow to her sense of independence or her vision of eventual arrival. And so if a job suddenly arose in some distant part of the city but held the promise of future opportunities, or if, just as suddenly, the opportunity for time-and-a-half beckoned, she would accept the work, though it meant leaving her two young boys alone at home.

She was never happy about abandoning us, and if she learned the evening before of an impending night shift, she would spend precious sleep time cooking and worrying over the details of meals and activities for the following day. If we had homework, she would set it out on the dining room table beside plates of cook-up and greens, or rice and stew chicken. There was tenderness in the dishes she prepared, love in a dish made perfect with the fruity bite of Scotch bonnet. But by the time she started putting on her coat and shoes, she would be in a state, exhausted, almost overcome with guilt, yet expressing it in bitter scoldings and fantastic threats. Her voice, schooled harshly in the Queen’s English, now articulating threats mined from the deepest hells of history.

"No answering the door or turning up the heat. No turning on the oven or stovetop at any time. You hear me, Francis? I will strap your backside red if I come back to find you or your brother hurt. Absolutely no TV after eight if I’m not back until then. No A-Team or Mrs. T or any other gangster foolishness in my home. Oh you smiling now? You think is joke? You feel you too harden to listen to me? Then you both go right ahead and touch that stove dial. Just answer that front door once. I will string you up by your thumbnails from the ceiling. I will skin you alive and screaming. I will beat you so hard your children will bear scars. Your children’s children will feel!"

Francis and I would nod and shake our heads all at once in urgent promising. Mother would neat up her uniform and hair in the mirror by the door and then leave without looking back, locking the door and testing the doorknob several times before we heard faintly among the noise of traffic her feet clopping quickly away on the sidewalk. In the hours that followed, Francis and I would try to be good. We would eat our dinner and put away the dishes and only afterwards find high up in the kitchen cupboards the other tastes we craved. Thick mouthfuls of corn syrup sucked direct from the yellow beehive container. The tongue-stinging green of Jell-O powder licked slowly from a spoon. We’d do the homework Mother had laid out for us, but, later, we’d learn equally important life skills and facts about the world from Three’s Company and The Dukes of Hazzard. When we were a bit older, on those Friday nights when Mother was away we’d watch late-night Italian comedies with the enticing parental guidance warnings. Francis and I each suffering patiently through intricate plots in a foreign language for the promise of a couple seconds of boob.

They’re showing! he once shouted from the living room. "Both of them at once! You have to get here now! Right now!"

Wait! Wait! I called from the bathroom. Stumbling, falling, then crawling with my pants still around my ankles until I reached him and could see. But nothing. Only that late-night infomercial for the Ronco food dehydrator.

Francis’s laughter. Stupid beef jerky.

In every case, he would have the decency and respect to wait for at least an hour before making his move. And the first time

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