User:Decross6/David Chariandy

Brother, written by David Chariandy and published by Penguin Random House in 2017, is a story about a young family that migrated to the outskirts of Scarborough, Toronto from Trinidad and Tobago in search of a better life in the 1990s. Not soon after settling in a small apartment in what is deemed "The Park," a low-income subdivision outside of the heart of the city, the father abandons the family, leaving Ruth, the mother, to work double and triple shifts to provide for her sons, Francis and Michael. Their mother often out of the home, Francis takes care of Michael as they experience the turmoil of being poor, young men of Black and Brown ancestry in Canada during the 1990s. Faced with pre-existing prejudices, poverty, and the trials of adolescence, Michael and Francis attempt to navigate life under the constant scrutiny of their community and the police.

This novel was inspired by David Chariandy's experiences living in Scarborough. It explores themes such as memory, grief, adolescence, transnational identity, sexuality, and immigration. Brother has been nominated for and received several literary awards, including Canada Reads in 2019. In 2018, two Toronto-based film companies purchased the film rights to the novel.



Plot Summary
The story opens with the line, "And if you can't memory right," he said, "you lose." The introduction establishes a first-person narrative, which continuously shifts between present tense and past tense as Michael, the narrator, recollects his life growing up with his brother as children, their time together as teenagers, and his life after his brother's death. Readers are not immediately aware of the context behind Francis' death, who died ten years before, though it is insinuated from the very beginning of the novel that he is dead.

The plot begins with the arrival of Aisha, Michael's first love, who moved away not long after Francis' death to become a writer. She returns to discover how Michael has been left alone to deal with his mother, who is afflicted with complicated grief that prevents her from moving on from her son's murder. Aisha and Michael's relationship is extremely complicated, as she pushes him to cope with everything and he rejects her help while simultaneously needing it. Aisha's return forces Michael to remember everything he had repressed since Francis' death, such as the shooting of Goose and when Ruth first began to show signs of mental decline, like the night that she threw the pickle jar at him.

The return of Jelly and Aisha in Michael's life force Michael to remember his relationship with his brother Francis, who would frequently accuse him of being weak and calling him derogative names. Francis also abandons Michael to deal with their Mother on his own. Michael's recollections reveal that Francis was a complicated young man struggling with the lack of a father figure and burdened by various responsibilities. Aisha and Jelly decide to throw a party in Ruth's home to celebrate Francis' life and help the community mourn him. Michael was initially angered by their actions, but eventually forgives them. This party was the first time that Ruth allowed other people in the apartment since Francis' death.

The climax of the novel occurs after Jelly's audition at the CNE, a big concert, with promoters across the world. Everyone goes, including all the boys from Desirea's, Aisha, and Michael. Francis and Jelly perform and everyone is super excited for them. Afterwards, the boys head back to Desirea's to prepare for a night of partying. Aisha leaves while Francis, Jelly, and Michael gather at the Ex. Francis approaches a promoter and asks to speak with him. After the white bouncers started giving the three young Black men a hard time, teasing them and using racial slurs, a fight breaks out and Francis gets seriously injured. Francis refuses to go to the hospital and demands he is taken home. While Ruth and Michael were collecting supplies from the medicine cabinet to help Francis, he leaves without a word.

The timeline slips back to present times when Ruth has a mental breakdown after the party Jelly and Aisha threw, leaving readers confused about what happens to Francis. Ruth runs out into the cold in a fit and is taken to the hospital for what is thought to be dementia. Michael snaps at Aisha and Jelly, and he is once again alone with his mother to remember everything that happened to lead them to that present moment. Michael remembers the trip they took to Trinidad as children and the period after Anton's death, revealing to readers that Francis and Ruth had a far more complicated relationship than readers were previously led to believe.

Flashing back to the night after the audition, Michael finds Francis heading to Desirea's where Jelly comforted him as Francis lost all hope: "'We're all just dreaming... It wasn't ever going to work... Nobody's listening. There's no way forward.'" Francis had said. As Jelly comforted him, the police arrived at Desirea's. In his concussed and beaten state, still angry from the altercation at the audition, Francis challenged the cops' orders and stumbles towards them, demanding they leave Jelly alone and to explain why they had arrived. With one fatal shot, Francis fell to the floor and the chapter ends.

The shooting was ruled lawful by the courts and Desirea's closed, only to reopen years later as a Happy Chicken chain restaurant. Jumping back to present times, Michael forgives Aisha and Jelly and accepts their efforts to help. Ruth is taken home from the hospital, revealing her broken heart over Francis' death. Michael, Ruth, Aisha, and Jelly, return to Ruth's home where they eat together, discuss visiting Francis' grave, and Jelly plays Trinidadian music on the record player. The novel ends with Ruth asking Jelly to turn up the volume.

Settings
The events of Brother occur in Scarborough in the 1990s.

Rouge Valley: The local "man-made" park that Michael and Francis visit for comfort and peace throughout their adolescence. It is described as highly populated and littered with trash.

Desirea's Barbershop: "A barbershop filled with boys apparently possessing records." This is where Francis and all his friends would hang out. Desirea's had a bad reputation and was frequently visited by the police. Desirea's is a gathering place for young men from immigrant families.

The Public Library: Where Aisha's and Michael's love first bloomed, in the cool air-conditioned library sitting at a round table. Michael visits the library as an escape from the police's racial profiling efforts and the summer's heat. The library plays the role of the meeting place for Aisha and Michael. Michael also meets Samuel at the library. The library is for Michael what Desirea's is for Francis, which symbolically represents how different these two brothers were.

Ruth's Residence: A small apartment located in The Park which is located in a rough, low-income neighbourhood in the heart of Scarborough and the setting for the majority of the novel.

Trinidad and Tobago: A British-West Indian nation. Samuel and Ruth are both from the same small village on the island. Ruth, Francis, and Michael visited once during the boys' childhood. This visit was the only time the brothers' went to the island and met their extended family, including various aunts and cousins. Only once they visited were they able to understand the different world of Trinidad and Tobago in regards to the poverty that existed. The majority of Ruth's family still lived there, they admired her for her courageous move to Canada, but were also jealous of her apparent success. The family was unaware of the hardships that Ruth and the boys face in Canada.

Main characters:
Michael: The first-person narrator of Brother. He is Ruth's second son and one year younger than his brother Francis. He was seventeen years old when Francis died and twenty-seven when Aisha returns to Scarborough. He is shy and in his youth looks to Francis for life advice. The brothers were extremely close as children, but began to drift as Francis became increasingly short-tempered and distant.

Francis: Michael's older brother by one year. Francis was angry at the world for the prejudices that he and people like him face. He frequently attempted to start fights and challenge authority figures, which scared Michael. He showed academic promise, but a heated exchange with a teacher leads to his expulsion from high school before graduation. He becomes frustrated with his mother, who he still cares for and loves following heated exchanges, and moves out when he's eighteen. From then on, he spends most of his time at Desirea's barbershop, helping Jelly with his music.

Aisha: Aisha and Michael were neighbours their entire lives growing up in the wasteland of "Scarberia." Her father immigrated from the same place as Michael's parents had in Trinidad and settled in the same part of Canada. Their friendship bloomed in the library where they would read and study together. After Francis' death, Aisha continued to try to support Michael, but she eventually moved away for school. She went to university and majored in Computer Science, and after she graduated, she did not get employed in her field like her classmates. After a while, she found employment with a bigger company, and after leaving the company, she resorted to programming on smaller projects. She returns to Scarborough after her father dies of cancer.

Jelly: Also referred to as DJ Djeli. Francis' best friend who is obsessed with spinning old records on his Technics 1200s. Michael prevented Jelly and the other boys who frequented Desirea's from coming to the house out of concern for his mother's mental heatlh. However, not long after Aisha returns, Jelly shows up and attempts to help Ruth and Michael overcome their complicated grief. Michael is angered by Jelly's presence, which Jelly understands, however, he persists and ultimately is a huge help to Michael. It is insinuated that Francis and Jelly may have been romantically involved, but it is never explicitly revealed.

Mother/Ruth: A Trinidadian immigrant to Scarborough. She left siblings and other family members in Trinidad to come to Canada. She intended to go to school to become a nurse, but is unable to fulfill this dream. She works long hours as a cleaner at a community centre after Michael and Francis' father abandons them, which requires her to take long bus rides to and from work. She becomes concerned with her son Francis when police notify her that he is associating with other men with criminal backgrounds. Throughout her sons' childhoods, she insists that education is the only way that they can achieve a better life.

Secondary characters:
Manny: Assistant manager at Easy Buy, the discount grocery store in which Michael works. His behavior shows cognitive dissonance, where Manny frequently discusses corruption in the workplace despite being corrupt himself. He illegally searches his employees' lockers for drugs. Manny also urges people to be concerned about handouts and corruption, even though he hires employees at half the wage.

The Boys at Desirea's: Anton, Dru, the Professa, Gene, Raj, Kev, and Trance. Dru, the barber and owner of the shop. Anton, the Professa, Gene, Raj, Kev, and Trance, in addition to Jelly and Francis, spent much of their time in the shop. All of the regulars have immigrant parents from countries such as Trinidad, Poland, and Somalia.

Anton: A boy from the Park who became a petty drug dealer and was known in the neighbourhood for his matching tracksuits. Anton was shot and killed in the neighbourhood one night as Francis and Michael were on their way home. Francis approached the bleeding body while Michael stayed far away. When they heard the sirens starting, they began to run, but were caught by the police and accosted. After being brutally treated by the police, it was reasoned that they had nothing to do with it and were let off. The event profoundly changed the brothers as they realized the place they were living in was more dangerous than their mother had allowed them to believe. The shooting especially impacted Francis, who began acting like a zombie afterwards.

Samuel: Aisha's father and a Trinidadian immigrant. He lives close to Michael's family in Scarborough, works as a security guard, and becomes friends with Francis when they bonded over listening to old music together. Michael learned about Samuel and Francis' friendship years after Francis' death. Samuel's death at the beginning of Brother from cancer leads to Aisha returning to Scarborough.

Goose: The 7-year-old sleeping girl that was shot by a flying bullet that pierced her bedroom window the night that Anton died.

Background
David Chariandy's parents migrated from Trinidad to Scarborough in the 1960s, where they had David and lived as working-class immigrants. Chariandy's debut novel, Soucouyant, was published in 2007 and won an array of awards. Soucouyant also dealt with the complicated relationship between young Black men and their mothers.

In an interview with Lisa Ray, Chariandy states that he spent ten years writing Brother and in the novel he sought to represent the Scarborough that he knew as a child as well as what Scarborough is like today.

Brother is dedicated to Austin Clarke (novelist), a Caribbean-Canadian novelist who Chariandy thanks again in the acknowledgements. Clarke once remarked that summer time in Canada was "killing time" for Black men. David Chariandy wrote a eulogy for Clarke when he died on June 26, 2016 in which Chariandy stated that Clarke "was for me a fiercely supportive mentor and role model" who "inspired and nurtured two generations of black writers and intellectuals globally."

At the beginning of the acknowledgements, Chariandy quotes a line from Sophocles' play ''Antigone. Antigone'' is an Ancient Greek tragedy in which the main character, Antigone, buries her brother Polynices who has died in battle despite the state forbidding her to do so. Chariandy chose to end his novel on this quote because Antigone, like Brother, examines the distinctions between legal and familial duty.

Analysis
Paul Barrett in his article "Learning to Memory Right" states that Brother humanizes Black men who have been killed by police by undermining stereotypes of Black youth. Barrett also stresses the importance of memory within Brother. The novel explores how immigrants remember their country of origin and how memory is affected by the traumatic loss of a loved one.

According to Patrick Abatiell, the main themes of Brother are complex grief and the frustration caused by systemic inequalities that prevent growth. Abatiell believes that the lack of change in Scarborough, caused by systemic racism, augments the grief that Michael and Mother feel after Francis' murder. Although Abatiell wishes that the novel was a little longer, he believes that Chariandy effectively addressed major racial issues in Canada and the African diaspora.

Genre/Style
Brother is a literary narrative as well as a bildungsroman - a coming of age novel. The novel traces the childhood, adolescence, and adulthood of Michael and Francis. Much of the narrative concerns the summer of 1991 when Francis was 18 and Michael was 17. The novel navigates what it is like to be a young adult Black man in terms of racial profiling, sexuality, and dreams for the future.

Brother is told in the first-person by Michael. The novel is only 7 chapters long and is a non-linear narrative. Rather than the story unfolding in chronological order, the narrative alternates between the current time (ten years after Francis' murder) and various times in the past, including the summer of 1991 just before Francis' murder and Michael's earlier childhood, such as the family trip to Trinidad. Non-linear narration is often used to reflect the thoughts of the narrator.

Themes
Brother addresses several major themes associated with adolescent, Black, and immigrant life.

Police Brutality: As young Black men growing up in a maligned neighbourhood, Francis and Michael often encounter police violence. While the police are investigating a shooting in Scarborough, during which Anton is killed, Francis and Michael are both handcuffed and Francis is hit by an officer. The officer is not punished for assaulting a cuffed suspect and Michael considers themselves to be "lucky." After this shooting, the police become more probing, regularly questioning people in Scarborough without cause. According to Michael, by fourteen he felt the threat of police brutality and the assumption that he was a member of a gang or a dangerous person. Despite being badly injured from a beating, Francis is shot by the police at 18 years old when he demanded why the police wanted his ID.

Food: Although Ruth worked hard to provide for her sons, similar to other families from the Park, food was a constant struggle. The food in their house as children was not to be touched by anyone but Ruth and often times they would have to stretch portions to make the food last longer. As Ruth was the sole provider to her two boys, she would always make sure there was food on the table but she seemed to never eat unless her sons insisted. She cooked basic meals unless it was a special occasion she would make a traditional Trinidadian dish for them to enjoy. Their food struggles are representative of their class struggles within society.

Immigration: Ruth is known to have immigrated to Scarborough from Trinidad and Tobago in hopes of creating a better life for her children. As Samuel is also an immigrant, both parents, as well as many others from the Park, are seeking better lives for themselves and their children in Scarborough. This is why Ruth works as hard as she does to make sure her boys stay out of trouble.

National Identity: As a Black family in Scarborough in the 1990s, all that was desired was to fly under the radar, especially during the rise of police brutality. Ruth did little to express her identity from Trinidad and Tobago. Sometimes when she would get mad at her boys, her accent came out, which is how they knew she was upset with them. She would also cook traditional meals when they could afford the ingredients, typically on special occasions.

Transnational Identity: Transnational networks are formed in Scarborough and Desirea's. These communities are comprised of immigrants from multiple different countries, such as Trinidad and Tobago, Vietnam, Jamaica, Sri Lanka, and Poland. Music and food are used by the residents of Scarborough to represent their cultural heritage.

Adolescence: This book takes place majorly during Francis and Michael's adolescent period (10-19). As they were only a year apart, they got to experience many new things together that occur during this phase of life which strengthened their brotherly bond. During their youth they sneak out of the house, drink, drive, and discuss their sexuality.

Sexuality: Francis does little to help Michael understand his sexuality. Michael would ask Francis about girls, but he would always brush them off leaving Michael with very limited information or understanding. It is hinted at throughout the novel that Francis is gay. Michael starts to understand his sexuality through his relationship with Aisha.

Grief: Based on the library books he reads, Michael diagnoses Ruth with complicated grief. Also termed persistent complex bereavement disorder, complicated grief is different from normal grief because the bereaved is incapable of moving forward in their life. People suffering complicated grief find it difficult to get out of the grief state. It has multiple causes, including an unexpected, or violent death, or the death of the child.

Memory: The novel begins with Michael remembering a time he climbed up a telephone pole with Francis, when Francis said to him, ""And if you can't memory right," he said, "you lose."" The majority of the story is told in recollection. Michael switches from past to present day to describe the memories of their lives when Francis was alive as well as current events and the everlasting grief that they live with.

Reception
Brother has been nominated for and won multiple awards since its publication. It won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in 2017. It was on the longlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2017. Brother also received the Toronto Book Award in 2018. In addition to winning multiple literary prizes, Brother was nominated for fourteen awards and was named book of the year by many newspapers, including The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and Quill and Quire.

In 2019, Brother was a candidate and finalist for Canada Reads and was defended by actress Lisa Ray. In their discussion about the book, Chariandy and Ray describe the publication of Brother as a political act since it represents the underrepresented and maligned community of Scarborough and the humanity of victims of police violence. Ray chose to represent Brother for the Canada Reads competition because "'it is so relevant. It is very very timely.'" For Ray, Brother helps show Canada's history of racism and how it persists in the modern day.

Publication
Brother was published by Penguin Random House in 2017.

Others
Brother was picked up in 2018 by Conquering Lion Pictures and Hawkeye pictures, two Toronto-based film companies; Clement Virgo is scheduled to direct the film.