Frantz Fanon, My Brother

Book excerpt: The short, but remarkable, life of Frantz Fanon has attracted several biographers, all of whom have relied on Fanon’s older brother, Joby, for information on Fanon’s early life. Dissatisfied with these portrayals, Joby decided to tell the story of his brother in his own words with a richness of detail not found in any other work. Translated into English by Daniel Nethery, this is an intimate, passionate, and very human account of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Frantz Fanon stands as one of the most uncompromising critics of racism and colonialism. His experience growing up as French colonial subject taught him to be fearless in the defense of his ideals. At the age of seventeen he left his home island of Martinique to fight in Europe against Nazi Germany. After the war he studied medicine and wrote his first book, Black Skin, White Masks. He practiced as a psychiatrist in Algeria and put his medical skills and literary talent in the service of the struggle for Algerian independence and African liberation. He died in 1961, one week after the publication of his classic text, The Wretched of the Earth. He was thirty-six years old.