Creating Reality in Wideman's and Kincaid's Sibling Memoirs

Introduction: Authorship and Authentic Reality

Wideman's assertion about the author's view and presentation of the world as he or she sees it is certainly important. Indeed, it is the work of every author to create for readers an authentic presentation of the world as he or she sees it. This is particularly true of authors who occupy as important a position in history as the writers of the African-American literary tradition of resistance to oppression. Both John Edgar Wideman and Jamaica Kincaid present their intensely personal experiences in such a way as to provide readers with an authentic view of what reality is for these writers.

Both intensely intellectual, their respective works Brothers and Keepers and My Brother create for readers worlds that present reality not only as a perceived black oppression, but also the wide diversity that exists among African-American people in terms of social and professional position. Both works therefore show that these worlds cannot be seen as a one-dimensional sphere of suffering and oppression. While these are certainly realities, there are also personal realities that are intensely human. As such, these realities present multiple dimensions of the African-American experience — which is also a human experience, and one of family relationships that is more often than not problematic and painful.

Kincaid's My Brother: Personal Love and Political Context

Kincaid's memoir My Brother concerns her rather distant relationship with her family, having left her home in Antigua at sixteen and returning only after an absence of twenty years. When her brother Devon is diagnosed with AIDS, she brings a supply of an expensive drug home to help him — an act rooted in a love she did not realize she had for him.

The author sketches two basic realities: one that focuses on the narrator's relationship with her family, and another within a larger context in which the drug she brings home is too expensive to be made available in a third-world country like Antigua. There is therefore an interplay between personal tragedy and the politics of oppression. By integrating the two, Kincaid creates a reality that provides a human context to political suffering. Rather than collectively branding a whole nation as an impersonal, suffering collective, she gives its people a human context. They are people with families who experience love, sorrow, and despair like any other human being from any other nation on earth. The result is both an expansion and a minimization of context: Kincaid's very personal story creates a wider sense of identification for readers, personalizing the narrative to such an extent that any reader, as a human being, can understand the feelings behind the story, even while recognizing the limitations of the political context.

What is important here is that Kincaid creates identification by portraying Antigua not merely as a poverty-stricken collective — though that reality is certainly part of the story — but also as a nation that is human, like any other. When reading the memoir, the reader is moved by the emotions and the plight of the family to such an extent that race and skin color become secondarily important to the fact that these people suffer as human beings.

Another interesting contextual factor is that Kincaid focuses not only on her nation's poverty but also on certain individuals, such as herself, who are able to free themselves from perpetual poverty. She leaves home at a very young age, and twenty years later she has the means to purchase expensive medication for her brother. By sharp contrast, she finds him in the poorest hospital in a town where no facility is affluent enough to keep drugs on hand.

Individual Choice and the Limits of Escape in My Brother

Because of her family connection with Devon and the love she feels for him, the narrator does all she can on his behalf. She seeks out the best authority on HIV/AIDS in the area and attends seminars to learn as much as possible about her brother's condition. This commitment goes beyond the reality of poverty and is rooted in love. Kincaid makes no grand gestures for her people as a whole; her first commitment is tightly focused on a single person — her sick brother. This reality is far more complex than the rather simplistic story of the black person who performs heroic deeds for an entire nation in the face of oppression or poverty. Kincaid is concerned primarily with her family, and to that end she uses all the resources she has accumulated throughout her life.

It is also, however, a story of extreme segregation within the nation itself. Kincaid made something of herself by moving to the United States and becoming a writer, while her brother remained in Antigua, all but consumed by the culture in which he grew up. It is as though living within such abject poverty, and within a culture of sexual promiscuity, leaves the inhabitants of Antigua with a persistent inability to become productive members of their society.

Kincaid herself proves largely unable to draw her brother into her own more affluent world, despite her commitment to his health and her attempts to encourage him toward a better life. When it is suggested that she bring him to the United States, she refuses. She does not want to bring his world into hers, having worked to escape the culture and poverty of her origins.

At the end, Kincaid is unable to save her brother. He remains within his self-destructive lifestyle and inevitably dies. There is a sense of inevitability to the whole situation. Kincaid's escape is portrayed as not impossible, but as highly unusual. Had it not been for her mother's somewhat harsh attitude toward her, Kincaid might never have escaped a life of early marriage and poverty like the others in her home country. She would have been as unable to make something of herself as her brother was. Even when facing death, Devon remains unable — and even unwilling — to make any changes that might prolong his life.

Kincaid's memoir is therefore a highly integrated and complex vision of reality, one in which there is no single paradigm of poverty, racism, or escape. She portrays a world in which individuals make choices and live with the consequences of those choices. The influence of culture and home are portrayed honestly, without seeking excuses in political unfairness or oppression, though these realities are certainly acknowledged. Most importantly, the narrative is sufficiently complex that all readers can find something to identify with. It is not a memoir by a person of color for people of color; it is a memoir about humanity. This is the new reality Kincaid portrays: all people, regardless of color, origin, or affluence, are primarily human and respond emotionally to the challenges of life.

Conclusion: Fluid, Multi-Dimensional African-American Experience

In conclusion, both Kincaid and Wideman create a new reality in which oppression, the oppressed, and the possibility of choice are fluid rather than static. By constructing multiple realities, their novels offer a far more authentic vision of the African-American experience than a single paradigm could provide. They present a multi-dimensional view not only of skin color, oppression, and poverty — though these realities are certainly part of the whole — but also of the human factor: choices made, identities denied, and family relationships sustained or fractured. These are things that all human beings are faced with. By relating them to the specific challenges of race, both authors create a reality that readers of any background can truly identify with.

References

Kincaid, J. (2003). My Brother. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Wideman, J. E. (2005). Brothers and Keepers. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.