Jamaica Kincaid's brother Devon Drew died of AIDS on January 19, 1996,
at the age of thirty-three. Kincaid's incantatory, poetic, and often
shockingly frank recounting of her brother's life and death is also a
story of her family on the island of Antigua, a constellation centered
on the powerful, sometimes threatening figure of the writer's mother. My
Brother is an unblinking record of a life that ended too early, and it
speaks volumes about the difficult truths at the heart of all families.
My Brother is a 1997 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.