My Funny Brother

What’s it like when people at school start saying things about your brother? What do they mean when they say he’s a bit ‘funny’? But Missy knows better. She knows her brother’s funny – she laughs at him all the time – and she doesn’t care if other people say he’s a bit ‘funny’. And then something happens that isn’t funny at all …

This teen novel deals unselfconsciously with a young girl’s experience of having a brother she adores who happens to be gay. As well as the joys of having such a brother, she is made to experience cruel homophobia. The theme of gayness has rarely been the subject of teen fiction in South Africa. Significant predecessors have been the work of Barry Hough in Afrikaans, and Robin Malan himself in The Sound of New Wings and in several of the novels in the Siyagruva Series, of which he was the Series Editor.