A Review of David Chariandy’s “Brother”
Black Lives Matter
Cultural appropriation. If you’ve been in Canada these last few months, you’ve endured the media blow-out from those two words, written by an acquaintance of mine in a rather ill-informed editorial about indigenous peoples. The idea is that everyone is now happy-clappy enough to get along and it’s okay for dominant cultures to borrow from minority cultures in Canada as a result. I don’t want to comment much beyond that because my feelings are rather mixed on the issue. (I agree with the idea of “borrowing” in principle — after all, it’s how we got rock ’n’ roll, though I’ll add that I’m uncomfortable that the genre tends to discriminate against people of colour — but something about the term unsettles me, probably because white culture is not quite at a place where it can just write about a minority culture’s perspective at will without a lot of research. Plus, the word “appropriation” has negative undertones akin to theft.) Those who are against cultural appropriation, however, have an extremely valid point: other voices need to be heard and their stories told because they need to be, if not just to foster community within the community, then for the sake of awareness of their culture. Stories told by a particular culture need to be told by that culture because, well, they have to be.
I came across Brother on NetGalley, entranced by the illustration of a turntable on the cover. I’m a vinyl lover, after all, so I thought this was going to be a light-hearted romp through hip-hop or dance music culture. I suppose it turns out I didn’t get a book squarely on music as I was expecting, but, boy, am I glad I read this one. The book is written by an African Canadian man (born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario) and is profoundly about the experience of blacks in Canada. Now I want to stop here and say that I’m not sure if I’m qualified enough to review this book. I am, after all, white and I want to check my white privilege at the door. I will say this much, though: reading this book effortlessly and squarely put me into the shoes of young black men living in the novel’s suburbs of Toronto. By the book’s end, I was angry. I was profoundly feeling angry. And a bit sad, too.
What Brother reminds me of in tone, at least at the outset, is Boyz n the Hood, though, unlike the film, it isn’t really about gang culture. A single mother, not a single father, is one of the protagonists. However, both this book and the film are coming-of-age stories of black youth, and perhaps that’s where similarities really end. Brother, which — according to its author — had a long gestation period, is the tale of two young men named Michael (who is the main protagonist — the novel is told from his point-of-view) and Francis. Both live in Scarborough in either the late ’80s or early ’90s. Michael is portrayed as being a bit socially awkward, while Francis is more cocky and confident (and angry), and the latter befriends what could be best described as “the wrong crowd” — a ragtag group that hangs out at a barbershop where one of the regulars spins records in hopes of becoming a DJ. Despite Michael and Francis’ mother’s best and stern efforts, Francis, as he matures, begins drifting away from the family. That’s one half of the story.
The other half of the novel’s story is told a decade later. By this time it has been established that Francis has been shot and killed, Michael is partially employed and lives with his mother, and the mother is nearly catatonic over the loss of one of her sons. By novel’s end, you’ll know why. The puzzle pieces slowly begin to fit together, and you begin to understand the struggles that immigrants to Canada (and their Canada-born sons and daughters) face: primarily, the institutionalized racism inherent in our culture, the injustice towards and the lack of opportunity afforded to black Canadians. If anything, I can say that, after reading Brother, I came to a greater awareness that Canada isn’t really the multiracial mixed salad we all think we are. The book points out that Canada is just as implicit in racism as our friends to the south of the border.
While some may look at the fact that the novel’s time-period setting isn’t quite explicitly stated as a glaring fault, I feel that there’s a reason for that. With Brother, Chariandy is saying that the past has always been the present. Though set in a period when rap was first going mainstream (an exact point that may be hard to really parse, as I believe there were multiple turning points in the music genre), Brother could be less a semi-autobiographical memoir of black lives lived as it is a present-day indictment of how their culture and race is treated. The novel shows that we really haven’t come very far in welcoming minority cultures in Canada. Even a visit to a hospital’s emergency ward in the form of questions a nurse or doctor may ask is fraught with racism of the institutionalized kind. Brother bares this out.
So while this book may not have been a title that I would have searched out on my own, though I may have been attracted to it in a bookstore with its record player cover, I am overjoyed to have read it. The language is precise. The story is exceeding well crafted — going into places you don’t expect at first, but into places that feel extremely obvious in hindsight (and that is not a criticism at all). Chariandy has been nominated for major literary awards for his previous (and debut) novel Soucouyant. Brother should cement his place as a literary contender on Canada’s main literary stage. This is a book, albeit a slim one at less than 200 pages, that should win Chariandy a Giller Prize. Or land him on the shortlist, at least.
Even though I’m white, I hope I was qualified enough to discuss this novel. It crackles with electric energy and really brings to life the hardships but also the sense of community surrounding African Canadians. After all, not everything about Brother is bleak. Delicious dinners are described in great detail, and various strands of music are savoured by the novel’s inhabitants. The friendships that also endure here — even in the face of tragedy — are remarkable. Brother shows that even though life in Canada is not the land of wine and roses that some may make it to be for immigrants, within the culture there is a sense of vibrancy. This is why Brother needs its story to be told. I know that it probably has changed the way I may look at black people in Canada, and I am so glad to have discovered both the brutal and pleasurable truths within its pages. This is an important, vital and groundbreaking book. You really need to read it. It’s that good.
David Chariandy’s Brother will be published by Penguin Random House Canada / McClelland and Stewart on September 26, 2017.
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