Jamaica Kincaid's Roller Coaster Life

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Family makes us who we are whether we like it or we may hate it but the author we meet not only do we read about her obsession with how her family we can see it because of how strong her writing is. This incredible authors name is Jamaica Kincaid who has written many wonderful books but one in particular is My Brother it is not a novel but a memoir. She goes on this journey of trying to be a good person to her brother, a man who is dying of AIDS. A man she once said he was perfect until he wasn’t because of what it is that’s going on with him, I will be focusing on Jamaica Kincaid’s memoir as a close reading and the relationship with her brother and how it seemed to just slowly disappear because of his sickness. I will be also focusing on her novel Lucy: A Novel that is which a fiction but doesn’t seem like it at all because she puts her own real life stories in this fiction novel. I am writing about these two books because in her memoir we read real life stories but in a fiction we know anything can happen but Kincaid always seems to keep her life in most of her books even if they are fiction. I believe it’s as though Kincaid cannot leave her past in the past it seems as though the minute she gets the chance to she brings her life in her writings.

Right from the beginning of My Brother we know her brother is the different one because out of the four kids her mother had her brother was the one born at the house. “He was not born in the hospital. Of my mother’s four children, he was the one born at home” (pg.3). I think we know right from the beginning her brother was the different one just that one thing him being born in the house made him different somehow. I think the way Kincaid wants us to read it is in a way of knowing her brother is different I mean we know he’s already from AIDS but why mention he wasn’t the one born in the hospital.

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