Brother, I'm Dying

“During the six months that he’d been visibly sick, my father had grown ashamed of this cough, just as he’d been embarrassed about his arms and legs over the many years he’d battled chronic psoriasis and eczema. Then too he’d felt like a ‘biblical leper,’ the kind people feared might infect them with skin-ravaging microbes and other ills. So whenever he coughed, he covered his entire face with both his hands.” 

Edwidge’s father, having grown up poor in unrest-riddled Haiti, has developed insecurities about his rightful place in the world. His coughing, just like his skin problems, risks attracting attention to his presence, and he feels exposed and shamed. Psychologically, he carries the trauma of war and poverty within himself, and this description suggests he is left feeling like he might ‘infect’ others with his condition of uncertainty and malaise, so he shies away from being noticed.

“After a few visits, however, he too began dreading that gray and dingy room, its stale and stuffy smells, its peeling beige paint and anti-smoking posters, because it was the one place where our father’s predicament was most unambiguous, where his future seemed most uncertain. At the same time, it was where Papa appeared most comfortable, where he could cough without being embarrassed, because others were coughing too, some even more vociferously. In the skeletal faces and winded voices around him, he could place himself on some kind of continuum, one where he was still coming out ahead.” 

The author uses strong contrast between the oppressiveness of the doctor’s waiting room and her father’s sense of liberation because now he is among people who share his predicament. Not only is he able to cough freely, unafraid of negative reactions, but he can also find solace in gauging the level of his illness in comparison with others. This passage speaks of the basic human desire to live, and live freely, in keeping with the larger theme of the novel.

“Everything was suddenly mixed up in my head and leading me to the darkest places. Would I carry to full term? Would there be complications? Would I die? Would the baby die? Would the baby and I both die? Would my father die before we died? Or would we all die at the same time?”

The coincidence of Edwidge’s pregnancy and her father’s illness symbolizes two ends of a spectrum: On the one hand, a new life thrives, and on the other, almost like in a fairy tale, another life has to end. Edwidge’s fears are normal for a pregnant woman, but her having to face her father’s imminent mortality exacerbates them.