Lubna Alli

The Concept of Home

In the novel Brother home is a complex place embodying different identities and meanings as it centers itself on the dichotomous relationship of staying and going, safety and violence, and love and pain. These different iterations are explored in the experiences highlighted by the different characters Micheal, Francis, Ruth and Aisha. There seems to be a central theme of fleeing explored in this book, which highlights a complicated relationship with the idea of home. On page 171 Micheal narrates, “There are many ways a person can flee. Aisha left for university. And my brother’s friends each, in their own ways, fled. But of course, you can’t ever really flee.” This complicated relationship with home in a community with drugs, crime, poverty and less opportunity like Scarborough pushes a narrative that the only way to succeed is to make it out, and moreover it seems as though there is always something that pulls the characters back to their roots despite this.  

Ruth, also known as Mother, is the first example of the relationship between diaspora, the land, and the changing physical geographies that redefine the bounds of home. On page 140, Micheal says. “But others travelling ‘back’ to that mysterious place that some—but never our mother—called home.” To her, although home and comfort was once Trinidad, Scarborough for her is just as much a means of comfort as it is a means of escape, survival, and betterment for her and her boys. On page 14, this complex relationship is explored, where Micheal states, “…fear of our mother, who warned us, upon pain of something worse than death, not to squander ‘our only chance’.” This notion that we must make it out of the “hood”, that in the struggle comes reward, and that there are no second chances for people of poverty highlights the very real issues surrounding opportunity in marginalized, low income, and first generation communities. Noteworthy to mention is also the juxtaposition between how easy and glorious Ruth’s family presumes her life in Scarborough is versus her harsh reality of chronic tiredness, racism, violence and social isolation that she faces in face of pursuing betterment. 

This idea of the only chance out is demonstrated more closely in Aisha’s story as she is talked about as an outsider of sorts because she was able to leave and come back. Ruth referred to her as one of the ones that would make it, and upon her return there was sentiment of resentment expressed that she was different, unable to relate. On page 44, Micheal states, “We are struggling at home, Mother and I, in more ways than one, and we do not need the added weight of more grief, particularly of someone who’s not been stuck at home and in a shit job. Someone with options. Someone who’s managed to get away.” This highlights the idea of the trader that often comes with communities that are dependent on each other to pool together resources to move forward together. The notion that Aisha was able to escape on her own and without consideration for the others almost comes across as a slap in the face to those that are still in the real thick of it. This complicated relationship of home is different for her as it is merely a temporary return to the problems Micheal and Ruth still face as a constant. This almost justifies an oppression olympics of sorts; yes, Aisha might not still be facing the same real harsh realities as Micheal and Ruth, but it does not mean she is not carrying baggage from her previous lived experiences in Scarborough. When you get out, are you really ever out?  

For Francis, home was more than just a physical geography, but also a social geography. It was not just tied to his family but also his friends, who for him were like family. He took on the primary role of the protector, and in many ways this is a direct reflection of the lack of safety, security, and stability that he felt in his space, a place where this should not be a concern in any other human context. Someone like him was supposed to spend his time in school, but instead he took on the role of the older son, father, husband, and man of the house and worked to provide for his mother and brother. Home for him was a place of respite after a long day of work, but it was also a place of sad heaviness, a reminder that his mother’s health was dwindling, a reminder that he was not leading a life he was proud of showing her, and place where he escaped so that he could avoid bringing his personal problems into his family’s life. Page 133 highlights this complex dichotomous relationship between Francis and the system, stating, “He began whispering apologies to her for everything, for his face, for his blood upon her clean nightdress, for the hard work she’d always had to do.” This is a very significant scene, not only in the book, but also in the story of Francis and his relationship to his mother and to home as he blames himself and self loathes in guilt for displeasing her. In reality, he owes no apology to a system that continues to perpetually hurt him and his family, but unfortunately, it is that same system that makes him feel like it is his responsibility to do so. 

Last, Micheal, the narrator of the story sees his home Scarborough through the eyes of the insider rather than the outsider. He acknowledges the stereotypes that Scarborough faces but also rewrites them as beautiful and worthy of knowing. Although he might be comparatively more sheltered to the experiences of violence, loss, and drudgery than his brother Francis, his experiences in Scarborough are still valid as shown in the fluidity of experiences of home in a place that is framed in the media as unhomely. On a wider scale, on page 8, he also talks about him and his brother’s complex relationship to the land that he has always called home, saying “Our mother had come from Trinidad, in what parents of her generation call the West Indies. It was a place that Francis and I, both born and raised here in Canada, had visited once and could recognize vaguely in words and sounds and tastes.” The idea of home here takes on many different meanings and spatialities for Francis and Micheal as they still recognize and remain connected to their West Indian roots, but continue to also experience this new idea of home in Canada that provides both a competing and complementary identity crisis, where Micheal even touches on the texture of his mixed Black and Indian hair as an example of this. Each of the characters in the novel and their intersections are all valid in the very dynamic relationship they have to the idea of home. 

Beauty and Joy

Everyday beauty and joy compliments the relationship between the story of loss, drudgery and violence that is presented as another central theme in the novel. As someone that was born and raised until the age of 7 in Guyana, right next door to Trinidad, and that also spent the majority of my childhood in Scarborough, there were a lot of subtle examples of beauty and joy that resonated with me. The most familiar being Ruth’s home cooked West Indian food, many of which were not only recollections for me of the place I am from, but that also serve this same happiness for Ruth and her boys in times of despair. On page 8 Micheal references the significance of his mom’s food, saying “The tenderness was in the dishes she prepared, love in a dish made perfect with the fruity bite of Scotch bonnet.” Food tells a story of diaspora, of belonging, and of security and safety to the land and it’s meaning to one’s identity. Another example of this beauty comes from The Rouge, where nature creates a means of escape and relaxation for Ruth and her boys. On page 148 Micheal says, “Always, for our mother, there was hidden life to point out for us in the Rouge.” This escapism is often very needed for marginalized communities and greenspaces serve as a useful community tool to combat the mundanity of everyday life—the Rouge serving that exact purpose for Micheal and Ruth when they were overwhelmed or stressed. Last, music is something that continues to perpetuate joy for many communities alike, including Micheal’s community in Scarborough, where the music reflects the local people, cultures, stories, struggles, successes and relationships. Desirea’s was a place that provided a safe haven for Francis and his friends, as well as Micheal and Aisha. It had the sounds, people, smells, and vibrations that allowed locals to feel good and safe. Micheal touches on this experience of entering Desirea’s on a night out on page 114 by saying, “I saw Francis next to Jelly as his man switched up the music, knitting together two completely different tracks, old and new, Caribbean and American and now Afriacn soul, and then a cheer rising from the crowd. Francis calling out ‘Volume!’ and others joining that call.” An extension of this joy can be seen in page 177 where Micheal says, “We have eaten together, and there is music low on the record player, and we are here and for the moment together.” The beauty in Scarborough comes in this beauty of the social, in the beauty of community. Despite the struggles through the hard time, there remains strength in the resilience. 

Scarborough Then and Now

As the novel explains Scarborough both in a physical landscape context and a social landscape context, there are vast similarities and differences that I can draw on. From a physical perspective, Scarborough then compared to Scarborough now is very different. Certain things remain, like the rust on the apartment building communities, or the snow on the sidewalks, or the nature in the Rouge. But in many other ways, Scarborough is now much more built up than it was 20 years ago. There are many examples of street art (for example, at Morningside and Kingston), there are many new developments that make the physical landscape of Scarborough much less of a suburb and much more of a growing city, and last, Scarborough today is not a place swarming with cop cars on every block, the way the book presents the physical landscape of the Markham and Lawrence area. 

On a social level, there is good reasoning to argue that Scarborough is the same as it was 20 years ago. This can be argued from a position relative to the rest of Toronto, where Scarborough is still a high influx immigrant area. Page 38 of the book touches on this stating, “They carry their own histories and their own hopes of genuine arrival. They are marked by language and religion and skin, and their jobs are often temporary and fragile.” This continues to spinball the social landscape by touching on the continuous issues of racism, police brutality, profiling, poverty and surrounding stereotypes that Scarborough continues to face. Page 73 highlights this continuous complicated relationship with profiling, crime and immigrant populations stating, “Some called for a crackdown on crime, others for much more. One columnist wrote in the old and ready-made language about ‘immigrants’ and ‘ethnic neighbourhoods’ and ‘sending people back where they came from,’ even though most in the Park knew that the suspects had all been raised in the surrounding city.” This continues to evolve in the story of many newcomers to Toronto who find themselves pushed to the peripheries of the city in the suburbs of Scarborough where there is cheaper housing, more ethnic food, and familiar faces. This also comes at the cost of many other social stigmas and mistreatments, which, on page 82 Ruth says her husband faced, “There were countless indignities a man like him had to face, and there had been tolls, she explained.” The “like him” is italicized, indicating that her husband’s being was politicized for simply being. He was a Black, low-income, formally uneducated immigrant who had to live with these identifying characteristics for the rest of his life, even carrying it on to his own children. 

It seemed as if Francis was much more aware of these injustices and harsh realities from early on, where Micheal says on page 22 that, “As Francis began to approach adulthood, he grew dissatisfied with the world and with his destined place in it”. He knew that the social landscape for a young Black man was not one that was favourable for him, and he warned his little brother about this on page 81, saying, “You’ve got to carry yourself better and think about your look. Doesn’t matter how poor you are.” In many ways, Francis had a larger vision that many of the youth of Scarborough today are still experiencing. These injustices are systemic; they do not go away overnight. White privilege continues to ring clear, even today in Scarborough. There is still someone out there preaching the same skewed advice that Micheal’s Easy Buy manager told him on page 42, “He lectures me about people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and saving money and not expecting handouts. It’s about attitude. It’s about possessing the right mindset.” The harsh reality is that these systems are violent and continue to encourage police brutality, crime, violence, and injustice on innocent young Black men, even in Toronto’s current political landscape today. No matter how much money you save, how hard you work, at the end of the day there will always be a glass ceiling that marginalized folks of colour will have to get through than their counterparts. This is a fact of the system, of a system that continues to perpetuate violent and chronic injustices on the innocent on a day to day basis. 

On page 60, after the shooting Micheal says, “The fragile peace was broken, nerves flayed once again.” This disruption of peace never left Scarborough. Almost every week in the last little while there has been a headline of crime happening in Scarborough. If these issues are still arising so many years later, what does it really say about how messed up our system is. What does it really say about who’s lives matter? Who’s lives have autonomy, have value? And, moreover, what does it say about the socio-political landscape of not only Markham and Lawrence, but also Scarborough and Toronto and Canada and the world as a whole. There is a much larger issue here at hand that continues to stem from small communities whose humaness is treated as inhuman. How can we combat this today like Francis did yesterday without costing the lives of innocent and hopeful young men. 

Works Cited

Chariandy, David. Brother. McClelland & Stewart, 2017.