'Stepping out of the Kumbla,—Kincaid's AIDS Narrative, ‘My Brother’

Abstract

Kincaid's narrative of her brother's life and death breaks new ground in the literature of the Caribbean region. It steps out of the kumbla of protective silence around AIDS and its victims. Despite its high prevalence in the Caribbean region (Kelly and Bain 33), HIV/AIDS has not been addressed by many Caribbean 'creative' writers. In fact, Kincaid's narrative, published ten years ago, is still one of only two major Caribbean literary works to do so - the other is Patricia Powell's 'A Small Gathering of Bones', though the disease is unnamed in the latter work. (More recently, there has been the autobiographical No Stone Unturned'by Rosemarie Stone). This is in marked contrast to North America, where AIDS since 1985 has become 'a widely acknowledged literary subject' (Cady 3). In charting the literature treating the subject of AIDS, which spans different genres - the realistic novel, science-fiction, and most recently detective fiction - Cady notes that there are two main approaches to writing about AIDS. There are authors' whose priority is to 'expose readers as closely as possible to the emergency of the epidemic and the suffering of the affected individual' (Cady 2) and others who treat the subject using a distancing device. Such a distancing device 'ultimately shields the audience from too jarring a confrontation with AIDS' (Cady 2). He further argues that that approach cooperates with the 'larger cultural denial of AIDS since it does nothing to dislodge readers from it' (Cady 2). Kincaid's narrative does not, strictly speaking, fall into either category as it both exposes its readers to the suffering of the affected individual as well as distances them from the situation by various structural devices. Further distinctions about the production of AIDS narratives have been made by other critics including Pear who explains that these narratives are either first person narratives, generally factual and written by persons who are infected by HTV, or fiction which is usually produced by those not infected by HTV. He further contends that 'heterosexual writers with first hand knowledge of HIV have been thin on the ground' (Pear 1). In making these distinctions Pear concurs with Cady's views that most AIDS narratives have been produced by gays and lesbians (Cady 6). Garmire also agrees and adds primarily white gay male writers. Perhaps then the silence in Caribbean literary works has been the result of the limited number of published gay and lesbian writers. There is also the fact that there are sections of Caribbean society that have difficulty in accepting homosexuals. I suggest, however, that the silence about AIDS is a silence that comes because of its association with sexual contact and a 'natural' Caribbean reticence about speaking publicly about sex except in the transgressive space of dance hall and calypso music. HIV/AIDS that is transmitted primarily through sexual contact in most countries (Kelly and Bain 9) is, therefore, very much a 'taboo' subject. In Powell's A Small Gathering of Bones'AIDS is not named as the disease from which one of the main characters, Ian, suffers. But the description of the illness clearly indicates that it is AIDS. The novel itself focuses on the intimate, turbulent and homosexual relationship between Dale and Nevin, who have to deal not only with the homophobia of their society but also with the internal conflict within their relationship. Powell's characters, however, are ignorant of the nature of AIDS; Ian's illness is seen as strange, puzzling but peculiar to him. In effect, Ian's illness could be read as a consequence of society's hate, specifically his mother's as she has rejected him because of his homosexuality, though the writer is careful to indicate the connection between his contraction of the disease and the casual and unprotected sex in which he engages. And though the novel is one of the few Caribbean works of fiction that openly treats the issue of homosexuality, its very title, A Small Gathering of Bones 'and its refusal to name the disease suggest an unwillingness to depict a subject that is still very much 'unspeakable' and 'untouchable' to use Cady's terms (1) in Caribbean society. …