Brown Girls
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- $229.00
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- $229.00
Descripción editorial
‘Brown Girls flows like a late night FM-radio dedication to the crew, the block, and the mission. This book’s a gift’ Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout
‘An ode to girlhood’ Raven Leilani, author of Luster
A fiercely poetic coming-of-age novel following a group of young women of colour in Queens, New York.
If you really want to know, we are the colour of 7-Eleven root beer. Colour of the charcoal pencil our sisters use to rim their eyes. Colour of peanut butter.
Brown Girls dives deep into the lives of a group of young women of colour growing up in Queens, New York. Here, streets echo with many languages, subways rumble above dollar stores and the briny scent of the ocean wafts in from Rockaway Beach. Here, girls like Nadira, Gabby, Naz, Trish, Angelique, and many others, struggle to reconcile their immigrant backgrounds with the American culture they come of age in. Here, they become friends for life. Or so they vow.
In this bold debut told in a uniquely lyrical voice, Daphne Palasi Andreades paints a stunning collective portrait of the journey from girlhood to adulthood, set against a backdrop of race, class, and marginalisation in America today. Brown Girls is an unforgettable love letter to women of colour everywhere from a daring new writer.
‘Joyous, bittersweet, hilarious … a coming of age story for us all’ Nikesh Shukla, author of Brown Baby
‘A song of celebration, of mourning, of rage, of fierce living’ Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Starling Days
‘If you liked LUSTER try BROWN GIRLS’ Sunday Times Style
‘Attracting huge amounts of buzz … a lyrical, urgent voice’ ipaper, Ten best books to read in 2022
‘A cracker of a first novel’ Glamour
‘A sensation in the US’ Guardian
‘Transporting … not to be missed’ Stylist
‘A daring debut … fearless’ New York Times
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTRE FOR FICTION 2022 FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022 IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT, GLAMOUR, STYLIST, INEWS, SUNDAY TIMES STYLE, LITERARY FRICTION PODCAST AND MORE.
About the author
Daphne Palasi Andreades was born and raised in Queens, New York. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she was awarded a Henfield Prize and a Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. She is the recipient of a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference scholarship, among other honors. Brown Girls is her first novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Andreades's underwhelming debut follows a group of young women of color who grow up in the "dregs of Queens." Narrated using the first-person plural "we," the story follows the trajectories of girls who, by age 10, have learned to never talk back, stay quiet in the face of bullying, and accept that the outside world is oblivious to their different shades of brown (more than a dozen of their names are first heard in reference to the teachers' confusion over who is who: "They call us Khadija, Akanksha, Maribeth, Ximena, Breonna, Cherelle, Thanh, Yoon, Ellen"). At 13, they secretly crush on brown boys (considered "trouble" in their parents' eyes) and experiment with makeup to make their skin lighter. At 15, they part ways, as some start high school outside of Queens, while others stay near home. At 18, a rift forms as they leave for different colleges and realize that in their home neighborhoods, they must downplay their intelligence and keep their ambitions to themselves. Still, they try to stay in touch as they navigate predominantly white spaces. The prose is often simplistic, and there is little character complexity beyond the women's contrasting paths. Unfortunately, the first-person-plural narration robs the work of nuance and oversimplifies complex ideas about race and identity.
