The book explores how the past is always coming back to intrude upon the future even at moments when that may be the last thing that is wanted. This is memory at work because the thing separates something from being left behind from the very same thing holding the promise of what could be isn’t the thing itself or even that thing as memory, but the emotional investment one puts into that thing. Everybody’s left-behind is somebody else’s gonna-be. “This is memory” is August’s go-to answer for a variety of images and experiences related through the book.Īnother significant moment is when August is contemplating the consequences of “white flight” and considers how when white people left urban centers behind to find refuge from multiculturalism in the suburbs, they left behind flotsam and jetsam of memories of the past which became future of Puerto Ricans and Blacks and single mothers and junkies. The mantra is, one supposes, the key to figuring things out. Oddly, the reader is given access to the question of what’s in the jar, but the jar itself remains shrouded in ambiguity. In between is reference to burying Clyde as the answer to what’s in the jar: ashes. It is a short conversation that begins with the question “What’s in that jar, Daddy?” and ends with August repeating her mantra.
In fact, it is more than cryptic it is purposely building a mystery thanks to vital information left out that would be useful in extricating meaning. The centerpiece of the exploration of the effects and consequences of memory is strangely cryptic conversation that takes place between August and her father. “This is memory” becomes her mantra and this mantra vocalizes the seamless interplay between the multiple elements all invisibly working together. What the story is really about is given voice several times by August, the protagonist of the novel. And while those themes are thoroughly explored and analyzed in the storyline, they are really situated more tangentially as extensions of a much broader concern that touches upon every other aspect covered by events and characters, including race, sexuality, friendship, and family relationships among other things.
We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.Īnother Brooklyn features a central narrative that seems to mark it as being primarily concerned with grief and loss. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.
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