Brother

Brother by David Chariandy
Published: 2017
Narrated by: Joseph Pierre
Length: 04:08 (192 pages)

This was on the longlist for Canada Reads 2018. The only other contender that I got around to reading was American War, which I thought was very good and which nearly won the competition, but I connected with Brother quite a bit more. I picked this up as part of my effort to inject a little more Canadian fiction into my reading, and I’m glad I did. It’s from my country but is still a world away from my experience growing up here.

This takes place in Scarborough, a neighbourhood in Toronto, in the early 90s and follows a young man’s life as he comes to age surrounded by prejudice and facing an uncertain future. His older brother dreams of getting out with a future in hip hop, his single mother who left her family in Trinidad works double shifts to support them, and he’s mainly interested in a girl in his neighbourhood. This takes place after their lives have been torn apart by violence, and we piece together the whole story through flashbacks.

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.

I said this story felt a world away from my experience growing up in Canada, being free from racial prejudice and knowing I could really attempt anything in life, but I could also relate in many small ways. Both of my parents emigrated from Scotland before I was born, and I grew up with a bit of a nagging identity crisis. Canada was clearly my home, but our history and extended family were back in Scotland. People referred to me as Scottish, but I had a limited understanding of that country, filtered through my parents’ stories. I’m happy to be connected to both countries, but at times when I was younger, I focused on the fact that I wasn’t completely connected to either. I imagine that disconnected feeling must be greatly compounded when you’re a person of colour and have to deal with everything that comes with that.

I think what stood out most to me in this was the quality of writing. It feels authentic, it tells the sort of story that should be heard more, and it’s just beautifully written. I was listening to this on audiobook and skipped back to listen to a few parts twice. Just little vivid phrases, like describing snow on the side of the road as “a rotting snow bank”, really brought the story to life. I wasn’t sold on the narrator, Joseph Pierre, at first, but once he clicked with me I thought his narration was fantastic and really did the story justice. He has a great rhythm and pace that really worked with the text.

They would pull out the vinyl, use a soft cloth to gently wipe the surface, check for scratches in a good light, and then cue the record up. They’d make all the boys in the shop listen, at first just listen, without messing with things. We heard, as if with new ears, the music of our parents, the lost arts of funk especially, but also ska and soul, blues and jazz. We heard an album by Toots and the Maytals, “borrowed” from a parent whose musical tastes you would never think to trust. We heard Coltrane as if for the first time. (What the fuck, whispered little Trance. Language, bitch! scolded Dru.) We listened patiently to Satchmo and Aretha Franklin, Marley and Harry Belafonte, stuff too sweetly familiar from TV commercials and movie soundtracks. But Francis and Jelly stole it all back for us, the dead and the living, made it ours to listen to, before Jelly went to work.

I loved the few moments where Chariandy was describing music, something I think is hard to really get right, as they mixed their parents’ classics in new ways while still respecting the original songs. After the above quote, he describes listening to Jelly, the DJ, mix those records and pull elements out of each song, and I just loved that. Unfortunately, I listened to this and don’t have a hard copy, and Google Books doesn’t have that section available to look up the quote.

His writing is simple but so rich, and even though he’s describing a character’s life that is mostly full of grief and disheartening events, it’s still a pleasure to read. David Chariandy is a writer I’ll be keeping my eye on, for sure.