But now, as we were growing up in the early ’80s, in the heated language of a changing nation, we heard it called other names: Scarlem, Scarbistan. It had once been called “Scarberia,” a wasteland on the outskirts of a sprawling city. The world around us was named Scarborough. The passage is significant because it speaks to how the police could easily misinterpret the manifestation of Michael's fear as guilt or reason for suspicion.

This time, however, the fear of being confused with the suspects who shot Anton registers in Michael as an urgent panic and inclination to dissociate from the commands being shouted at him. In this passage, Michael comments on how, as a young Black male, he is accustomed to being stopped by the police and knows how to play along by bending to their authority, even if it means some loss of dignity. They are soon caught by the police, who pull their cruisers to a screeching halt and blind the boys with lights. 34Īfter Michael and Francis witness Anton getting gunned down, the boys run on Francis's command. With the blinding headlights upon me, I couldn’t process the commands. But that night we sensed an urgency we hadn’t experienced before. There was a routine to it all: we knew that if you carefully played along you’d eventually be released, if not with your dignity, then at least with your skin. As the narrative progresses, Michael will finally face painful and tender memories about his brother, using the power of his memory to come to terms with Francis's death at the hands of the police. Although Francis is talking about the danger of being electrocuted, the scene is significant because it represents the brothers' relationship in microcosm and sets up the trajectory of the novel. In this passage, taken from the book's prologue, Michael recalls his brother's lesson about closely following his lead to avoid disaster. In the book's opening, Michael recounts the time his older brother brought him to a hydroelectric pole they could climb to get a good view of the city. 'And if you can’t memory right,' he said, 'you lose.' Michael and Francis, p. You had to think back on every step before you took it. You had to watch your older brother and follow close his moves. So when you climbed, he said, you had to go careful.

Brother by david chariandy