ABSTRACT
This work is an elegy, written by the grieving author in the immediate aftermath of the sudden death of her younger brother. In this short but gripping piece, she grapples with the insidious forces of racism and the toll these took on him, the ways he hid the toll, and the ways he sought to manage it all. Holding this as a constant, the author weaves in the tender, intimate, generous elements of the person her brother was to those who knew him, loved him, and learned and grew through their relationships with him. Ultimately, what both defined and then took away his life was the heavy burden he carried; he was “a successful Black man that shouldered everyone’s expectations and dreams of what a Black man in America could be.”
