David Chariandy

Story of the sons of Trinidadian immigrants and their struggle to battle against prejudices and live a better life.

Brother

MacKenzie Hamon

I listened to the audiobook version, and it was fabulous. Nuanced language, and a strong storyline meant I would often run farther than I'd planned in order to hear what happened next. Beautiful, and well-deserving of the WT Fiction Prize.

Sameer Vasta

I have been doing David Chariandy’s 
  Brother
 an immense disservice when I refer to it as a novel. There is a lyricism, a volume, a pulsating rhythm through every word Chariandy writes: 
  Brother
 is more song than novel.

(Originally published on inthemargins.ca)

The first time I read 
  Brother
, three words jumped out at me: violence, viscerality, and volume.

The violence in the story is both evident—in the beatings, the shootings, the jars of pickles breaking against the wall—and subtle: violence is hidden in the way the Michael and Francis perceive the world, in the way the world sees them. No one is ever calm, or at ease; living on the edge is trauma in itself.

Chariandy’s words, his lyrics of this song, are more than just sonorous; they are palpable. We feel each gaze upon the boys as if someone was gazing upon us, and we feel the knife blade in our own hands as Francis grabs it to protect his brother. Every setting, every circumstance is visceral. From the start, I felt dampness as if I had been sprayed by slush just minutes before.

Dionne Brand describes 
  Brother
 as “timbrous.” Marlon James says it is “pulsing with rhythm, beating with life.” The words are sonorous, but they are also loud. Chariandy infuses the entire story with music, but every word has volume: the sirens of the police cars, the ruffles of pages of books at the public library.

* * *

The second time I read 
  Brother
, I felt in it a story of grief. The book is an elegy to a lost brother, but it is about so much more loss. It is about the loss of innocence, about the loss of comfort, about the loss of community. It is a story of grief, of coming to terms that the world does not always cooperate and that we often lose what we had hoped and envisioned and must just take what we are given. We grieve those hopes and visions, we grieve the loss of lives we could have had. It is about complicated grief, but also a traumatic grief: it is not just a grief based on loss that lingers, but a grief that is reinforced every day by the trauma we face because of who we are.

The third time I read 
  Brother
, I felt in it a story of manhood. The story is filled with performative masculinity—most poignantly when Anton, after being beaten, turns his crying into laughter—and with the complicated dance of knowing what it is to be a man. Is masculinity performed, or felt? Is it seen, or perceived? What does it mean to be a man when nobody ever taught you how? What does it mean to be a man when you don’t know from whom to learn?

The fourth time I read 
  Brother
, I sang each word.

Chariandy’s tale of growing up in Scarborough is song as memory. It is a lyrical, melodious, melancholic reverie passing through time to evoke memory through stories.

Memory is “the muscle sting of now.” 
  Brother
 is that sonorous hum through those muscles. And so, I sing. Volume!, I say.

* * *

(Originally published on inthemargins.ca)

(I will be hosting a chat with David Chariandy at the Wolf Performance Hall on Monday, April 16, 2018 at 7pm as part of the One Book One London initiative. In our chat, we’ll be discussing some of the things I wrote about above; if you’re in London and have a free evening, please do come out and join us.)

'A brilliant, powerful elegy from a living brother to a lost one, yet pulsing with rhythm, and beating with life' Marlon James, Winner of the Man Booker Prize WINNER OF THE ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZE WINNER OF THE TORONTO BOOK AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR Michael and Francis are the bright, ambitious sons of Trinidadian immigrants. Coming of age in the outskirts of a sprawling city, the brothers battle against careless prejudices and low expectations. While Francis aspires to a future in music, Michael dreams of Aisha, the smartest girl in their school, whose eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But one sweltering summer night the hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably cut short. In this timely and essential novel, David Chariandy builds a quietly devastating story about the love between a mother and her sons, the impact of race, masculinity and the senseless loss of young lives.

Les Reynolds

Beautiful, haunting, powerful, eye-opening.

Princess Doe 

Jorge Amigo

Winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Longlisted for the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize A Globe and Mail Best Book A Quill & Quire Best Book of 2017 The long-awaited second novel from David Chariandy, whose debut, Soucouyant, was nominated for nearly every major literary prize in Canada and published internationally. An intensely beautiful, searingly powerful, tightly constructed novel, Brother explores questions of masculinity, family, race, and identity as they are played out in a Scarborough housing complex during the sweltering heat and simmering violence of the summer of 1991. With shimmering prose and mesmerizing precision, David Chariandy takes us inside the lives of Michael and Francis. They are the sons of Trinidadian immigrants, their father has disappeared and their mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home. Coming of age in The Park, a cluster of town houses and leaning concrete towers in the disparaged outskirts of a sprawling city, Michael and Francis battle against the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry -- teachers stream them into general classes; shopkeepers see them only as thieves; and strangers quicken their pace when the brothers are behind them. Always Michael and Francis escape into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness that cuts through their neighbourhood, where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves. Propelled by the pulsing beats and styles of hip hop, Francis, the older of the two brothers, 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. With devastating emotional force David Chariandy, a unique and exciting voice in Canadian literature, crafts a heartbreaking and timely story about the profound love that exists between brothers and the senseless loss of lives cut short with the shot of a gun.

Rochelle Butcher

Gelaine Trinidad

Jackie Cunningham

James Wattie

Emily Burns

Andrew Louis

Mehmet

Luke Leighfield

Val Moon

Eryn Morgan 

'A brilliant, powerful elegy from a living brother to a lost one, yet pulsing with rhythm, and beating with life' Marlon James, Winner of the Man Booker PrizeWINNER OF THE ROGERS WRITERS' TRUST FICTION PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE Michael and Francis are the bright, ambitious sons of Trinidadian immigrants. Coming of age in the outskirts of a sprawling city, the brothers battle against careless prejudices and low expectations. While Francis aspires to a future in music, Michael dreams of Aisha, the smartest girl in their school, whose eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But one sweltering summer night the hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably cut short. In this timely and essential novel, David Chariandy builds a quietly devastating story about the love between a mother and her sons, the impact of race, masculinity and the senseless loss of young lives.

Brother

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