A twelve-year-old boy spends his first weeks in New Brunswick's Robeson Village learning that a big brother can be protector, problem, myth, and memory in the same breath.

SYNOPSIS:

BIG BRO is told through adult Kesan's memory of Robeson Village in New Brunswick, New Jersey: the Ville, a place where people know your business before you know it is business. Christmas lights are stapled to brick. Kids ride through slush. Aunties watch from windows. Men stand by doors like the building assigned them shifts. Miss Pearl, Nana, Luther, Pops, Height, store girls, porch women, old heads, and bootleg music all make the village feel bigger than the buildings around it.

Kesan is twelve, newly inside a community that teaches by noise, jokes, correction, and everybody else's eyes. His brother is not just a sibling; he is a shield, a rumor, a standard, and sometimes the person creating the danger. The story moves through kitchens, courtyards, corner stores, apartment doors, and family arguments to show how a boy learns love, masculinity, loyalty, embarrassment, and survival from the people raising him together. BIG BRO is a community coming-of-age drama about memory, family systems, and the complicated hero worship of a younger brother trying to understand the man in front of him.