The Woman’s Brother Character Analysis in The 7 Stages of Grieving

The Woman’s brother, like her father, is only mentioned briefly—yet the struggles that the Woman describes him as facing are potent, painful, and revealing. The Woman’s brother is, at just twenty-one, a young and healthy man—yet after he gets in trouble with a racist police officer and resists arrest, he finds himself suddenly trapped in a cycle of alcoholism, depression, and continued legal trouble. The Woman uses her brother’s story to illustrate how structurally racist systems create indigenous suffering amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

The Woman’s Brother Quotes in The 7 Stages of Grieving

The The 7 Stages of Grieving quotes below are all either spoken by The Woman’s Brother or refer to The Woman’s Brother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

).

This is how it starts. This is how it starts, the cycle. The cycle. […]

You see. . .
No matter how clean our clothes are,
No matter how tidy we keep our house,
Or how well we speak the language,
How promptly we pay our bills,
How hard we work,
How often we pray,
No matter how much we smile and nod,
We are black, and we are here, and that will never change.

Related Characters: The Woman (speaker), The Woman’s Brother

Page Number and Citation: 294

Explanation and Analysis: