My Brother Study Guide

My Brother opens with Jamaica Kincaid seeing her brother lying in a bed in the Holberton Hospital in the Gweneth O'Reilly ward on the island of Antigua, where he is said to be dying of AIDS. Jamaica recalls his birth at their family home when she is thirteen years old. The family has just eaten their evening meal of boiled fish, bread, and butter, and her mother sends her to fetch the midwife, a large woman whose buttocks roll up and down while she walks, and who says that she will attend once she has finished eating. (read more)