We Were Brothers
by ballybeg
The course of sibling relationships is often laden with pitfalls and contradictions and divergent memories. We Were Brothers is a painfully honest appraisal of how two brothers learned to love and forgive each other, after a lifetime of misunderstandings.
Born into a racist family, in a time when their whole hometown was racist, brothers Tommy and Barry Moser could not help but begin life as racists. Barry, the younger brother and a now-famous artist, eventually questioned the values of his upbringing and worked to undo the standards of racism, bullying, and violence into which he had been indoctrinated. Tommy never sought to move past the racial and cultural attitudes of his early years. A rift was created between the brothers which grew until they were completely alienated, one from the other, for most of their adult lives.
In a compassionate and revealing examination of his family, his town, and the influences on himself and Tommy, Barry Moser looks back in this memoir, and traces his path of first escaping his racist heritage and then reconciling with it. He and Tommy, in the last years of Tommy’s life, healed their relationship and came to a fragile understanding of each other’s differences. The story is sad and brave and, ultimately, sheds light and power on the process of moving forward in life while still honoring one’s memories of the past, in learning to forgive and embrace family who it would be easier to condemn.
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