Brownstone
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A Harvey Award Nominee!
An Indie Next List Selection!
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book!
A Publishers Weekly Best Book!
“Angsty. Awkward. With a scrappy heart of gold, Brownstone is a must-read for anyone who’s ever felt totally out of place.” —Gabby Rivera, bestselling author of Juliet Takes a Breath
An exciting teen coming-of-age epic from author Samuel Teer and debut graphic novel artist Mar Julia, Brownstone is a vivid, sweeping, ultimately hopeful story about navigating your heritage even when you feel like you don’t quite fit in.
Almudena has always wondered about the dad she never met.
Now, with her white mother headed on a once-in-a-lifetime trip without her, she’s left alone with her Guatemalan father for an entire summer. Xavier seems happy to see her, but he expects her to live in (and help fix up) his old, broken-down brownstone. And all along, she must navigate the language barrier of his rapid-fire Spanish—which she doesn’t speak.
As Almudena tries to adjust to this new reality, she gets to know the residents of Xavier’s Latin American neighborhood. Each member of the community has their own joys and heartbreaks as well as their own strong opinions on how this young Latina should talk, dress, and behave. Some can’t understand why she doesn’t know where she comes from. Others think she’s “not brown enough” to fit in.
But time is running out for Almudena and Xavier to get to know each other, and the key to their connection may ultimately lie in bringing all these different elements together. Fixing a broken building is one thing, but turning these stubborn individuals into a found family might take more than this one summer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Almost-15-year-old Almudena meets her father for the first time in this affecting 1995-set graphic novel exploration of identity and family. When Almudena's white mother accepts a principal role in a dance tour, Almudena must stay with her father while he renovates a brownstone in his predominantly Latinx neighborhood. Upon learning that he's Guatemalan—and not Mexican like she assumed—Almudena's perception of her heritage comes unglued, revealing her own internal biases ("Aren't Mexico and Guatemala basically the same place?"). While working on building repairs with her father, the pair face various challenges, such as overcoming language barriers—he speaks only Spanish and Almudena knows only English, a dynamic that's sometimes rendered in speech bubbles reading "(Spanish, probably)." Almudena also experiences disappointment at her father's romantic relationship with a neighbor, which shatters fantasies about her parents reuniting. Via Almudena's resourceful and unfettered perspective, Teer (Veda) interrogates characters' preconceived notions surrounding one another's ethnicity and sexuality, clearing a path for greater openness and vulnerability throughout the community, which Almudena begins to see as an extension of her own family unit. Fluid illustrations by Julia (Who Was the Voice of the People?), saturated in rich earth tones, expressively distinguish each character's personality and breathe life into the vibrant metropolitan neighborhood. This energetic and emotionally grounded story hits the mark, culminating in a satisfyingly transformative tale. Ages 14–up.
