Brown Boy: A Memoir

by Omer Aziz

Brown Boy is an uncompromising interrogation of identity, family, religion, race, and class, told through Omer Aziz’s incisive and luminous prose.

In a tough neighborhood on the outskirts of Toronto, miles away from wealthy white downtown, Omer Aziz struggles to find his place as a first-generation Pakistani Muslim boy. He fears the violence and despair of the world around him, and sees a dangerous path ahead, succumbing to aimlessness, apathy, and rage.

In his senior year of high school, Omer quickly begins to realize that education can open up the wider world. But as he falls in love with books, and makes his way to Queen’s University in Ontario, Sciences Po in Paris, Cambridge University in England, and finally Yale Law School, he continually confronts his own feelings of doubt and insecurity at being an outsider, a brown-skinned boy in an elite white world. He is searching for community and identity, asking questions of himself and those he encounters, and soon finds himself in difficult situations—whether in the suburbs of Paris or at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Yet the more books Omer reads and the more he moves through elite worlds, his feelings of shame and powerlessness only grow stronger, and clear answers recede further away.

Weaving together his powerful personal narrative with the books and friendships that move him, Aziz wrestles with the contradiction of feeling like an Other and his desire to belong to a Western world that never quite accepts him. He poses the questions he couldn’t have asked in his youth: Was assimilation ever really an option? Could one transcend the perils of race and class? And could we—the collective West—ever honestly confront the darker secrets that, as Aziz discovers, still linger from the past?

In Brown Boy, Omer Aziz has written a book that eloquently describes the complex process of creating an identity that fuses where he’s from, what people see in him, and who he knows himself to be.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Race, Biography Memoir, Book Club, Canada

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 2023

Reviews

[Bena · Rating 3 out of 5]

To me, this was not a memoir. For me, memoirs dig deep and get personal, and Brown Boy just didn’t do that in my opinion. Even though I’ve just read a whole book about his life, I still feel like I don’t know Omer Aziz.

Of course, in many instances I resonated with Aziz. When it came to the feelings of imposter syndrome, being the only person of color in white spaces, being a child of immigrants who have sacrificed so much for you. But all those expressions felt surface level or Aziz would go straight to intellectualizing what happened. Aziz tended to end chapters with long winded philosophizing.

I almost didn’t read past the prologue. I think it’s very weird that Aziz used the Israeli occupation as a backdrop for his internal conflict, centering himself where it’s not his place to do so. I also think his use of East and West was cringe as hell. (A lot of the book was pretty neoliberal in that way)

The ending was also an issue for me. I don’t want to say it wasn’t satisfying because as this is a memoir, those are Aziz’s actual life events, but I didn’t understand it. How did his visit to Pakistan liberate him? Aziz does not try to explain or express why or how in any way. Maybe it’d in the subtext, but if so, it’s extremely subtle.

Overall, I see the vision here, but i think the execution was poor. I think this should’ve been a political, sociological, philosophical, or any other kind of text that drew from Aziz’s personal experiences. Or at least that’s what I got from it. This book was definitely not for me, but it’s probably right for someone else. 3 stars.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really honest memoir from a second generation Pakistani Canadian Muslim man who grew up in Scarborough and spent his whole life battling racism and Islamophobia. It was eye-opening to see just how far Canada still has to come to be a more accepting country. We truly aren't that better than America but the author spent time living and working in both countries and it was dispiriting to hear about his bad experiences serving in government under Trudeau's cabinet. Great on audio read by the author, this is definitely a must-read especially for fans of Can you hear me now? or Indian in the cabinet (other Canadian memoirs from BIPOC politicians).

[Alex Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

ARC Review ~~

I could not think of a better way to execute this story. Omer Aziz creates a relatable and realistic narrative through themes of ethnicity/race, family, and religion. A majority of the memoir expresses Omer's experiences being a person of color in a white world and how that affected him as a person with such big dreams. This memoir is an excellent example of how we must create our own paths and not let others' expectations or views stand in our way.

One of my favorite quotes: I was not here to fit in anymore. I was here to make room

[Shelby (catching up on 2025 reviews) · Rating 4 out of 5]

MEMOIR MONDAY • MINI REVIEW

I picked this up in late January and it kinda got lost in the shuffle with all of the fantastic new books coming out this year. I remembered it yesterday, and ended up finishing it last night. I'm so glad I did! I read along with the audiobook via @everand_us, narrated by the author. 💞

Brown Boy
Omer Aziz

Brown Boy is a memoir by Pakistani Canadian author Omer Aziz (that's Om-ER, not Omar). Born in a rough area of Toronto, and wise beyond his years, Aziz grapples with the violence and brutality of the post-9/11 world around him and his place within it. It is through a transformative discovery of reading and education that young Omer carves a new path for himself. A path that includes Ivy League Universities, and travel to Paris, England, Jerusalem, and beyond. Though he's earned his place within this elite world, Aziz struggles with feelings of inadequacy and imposter syndrome. Brown Boy examines overlapping themes of family, race, religion, identity and belonging. Definitely recommend!

📌 Available now!

[Nursebookie · Rating 5 out of 5]

TITLE: BROWN BOY
AUTHOR: Omer Aziz
PUB DATE: 04.04.2023 Now Available

SYNOPSIS:

Brown Boy is an uncompromising interrogation of identity, family, religion, race, and class, told through Omer Aziz’s incisive and luminous prose.

THOUGHTS:

Wow

This memoir is such a powerful read that all of us can essentially relate to Omer’s keen observation on assimilation, family, race, and religion. So many important themes on the difficulty of just purely being human and the want and need to belong. As a brown boy in a white elite world, Omer provides us all a narrative of whether we need to fit in or just be.

I enjoyed the writing. It was impactful to me as a woman of Asian background, and an immigrant.

[Giovanni García-Fenech · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aziz’s memoir follows the familiar arch of the immigrant/minority story in which the protagonist works hard, overcomes racism and poverty, and finds success. His trajectory: Working class Pakistani family in a poor Toronto neighborhood, the shock of finding himself among privileged whites in college, adventures in Oxford and Yale, and then on to the corridors of power.

The book is at its most interesting when Aziz goes deeper into particularities: the fear of violence in the masjid, the fear of violence (again) in the ghettos of Paris, the suspicion from both Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem, the tokenism and politics of Yale, and the racism in Trudeau’s administration.

There are some unexplained holes in his story: Are we really to believe his life miraculously changed from shiftless "goon" (his term) to scholarship recipient just from seeing Obama speak on TV? What happened between graduation and becoming a foreign policy advisor to the Canadian prime minister?

Aziz writes well, if at times too melodramatically for my taste, and I kept thinking of him as the anti-Richard Rodriguez (the author of Hunger of Memory) — instead of falling for the myths of meritocracy and assimilation, Azis says he wants to help open the world for other Brown people. Let's hope he does.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a wonderful memoir rich with Omer’s very personal experiences and life. Definitely the type of memoir I was looking to read!

[Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I had been to Pakistan only once, when I was a boy, and had no memories of the country. I wasn't even sure how many relatives I had there anymore. My link to that nation existed through my parents and the culture I carried with me, a product of history, migration, and colonization. Pakistan was an imaginary homeland."

"Despite being innocent of any wrongdoing, I could not understand why I still felt guilty."

"In one way, this interrogation room was familiar, since I had been questioned all my life about my identity and religion. I could have been at any border crossing in the West, no longer an individual but viewed as part of the Brown mass gathering at the barbed-wire fences of our democracies. Straight-haired, lightly bearded with brown skin, I had the sort of face you might have seen on the television screen, every day and night, for over twenty years."

"Like every brown-skinned person, I owed debt to the Black Americans whose emancipation presaged the liberation of us all: Black, Asians, Indigenous, Brown, and yes, white people, too, who had the most work to do to become free. Darker days might be ahead, but I would not succumb to fear. I would try to serve the legacies of those who had made room for me and, crucially, those who are coming next."

"I had pushed down the pain of slights and rejections and family dysfunctions and racial judgments for so long that, for a couple of years, I just disappeared."

"...the ideas I held in my heart: that one must live "as if" the trials of race and belonging did not exist, rising above prejudices and stereotypes, acting so free that one's very presence was an assault on the systems of justice."

"I was torn within myself, trying to be two people at once, part of two cultures, finding acceptance in neither."

"Even as the interrogator's pen clicked and the clock ticked, another question formed in my mind: What kind of dream had I been pursuing all these years, trying to educate myself out of my own skin, reading every book I could get my hands on, separating myself from my past, that in a single instant this stranger could put me right back into the box from which I sprang? Did I seriously think that I could escape from my tribe, liberate myself from the ordeals of Brown people, my people? How could I be so naive to believe that by "earning" the right badges and degrees, I might convince the inquisitors of the West that I was a worthy human being? I had unconsciously come to believe a lie."

"I had learned the hard way that while the examined life might be more blissful, the examined life-from the eyes of a Brown boy-is a long trial: a crucible, or a crusade, set at the border between East and West."

"Once again, I doubted my place in my community, felt the need to adjust and wait, lest I be seen as an intruder. Then I decided, not for the last time, to act "as if" I belonged."

"Everywhere I went there had been an implicit question everyone seemed to be asking: What side are you on? It should have been an easy question to answer, given that English was my first language, that I was born to a working-class immigrant family in North America, and the journey I went on took me from a little corner of Toronto to Paris, Cambridge, Yale Law School, places I believed would allow for my rebirth as a true Westerner. Over time, I had been transformed into someone I no longer recognized. Over time, my mask had disfigured my face."

"I did not understand that the anguish they carried was tied to a deeper story of leaving their past behind, reinventing themselves in a cold and distant country. They were growing up in a new world, just like I was, unanchored souls without a secure life. Though migration could be full of beautiful journeys, there was also a bitterness at the heart of the experience. Bitterness and violence. Families were citadels of memory, connecting stories to future generations-but the chain had been broken along the way, and could be redeemed only in the children."

"School was a sort of imprisoning freedom, just being out of the house and in another building. But I saw no purpose to school, and was uninterested in anything the teachers had to say. The worst sort of apathetic student: one who is naturally curious but has learned to keep his mouth shut. A lost cause."

"For Shilton's roots, like those of most of the West Indians here, went back to both Africa and India. I did not understand how that was possible, but history was obscured in school: the white people had come to North America and traded furs and everything was lovely ever after. Perhaps this was the real reason I paid no attention at school: I had the child's aptitude to detect when he is being bullshitted."

"I had learned to be afraid of white people from before I learned the alphabet. After a white girl asked me why my lunch looked like poo I began throwing out the lunches Amma made for me every day. It's almost cliched, the lunch being thrown away, yet in those early years, it meant a growling stomach and a building resentment as the hours passed and I went hungry."

"The white boys were prone to use slurs. Paki was their favorite racial insult. Even at the age of ten, I knew this word to be derogatory because it felt like a dagger in my skin. Paki-not shorthand for "Pakistani," but a racial slur that started with neo-Nazis in England. None of us kids knew the etymology of this epithet, but we all knew it was a vile insult, and that nothing could be said in return. The white boys were the only ones with the language to provoke our shame. That was their power."

"Our teachers liked to say we lived in multicultural country, but that multiculturalism, on the ground, was still deformed, and full of subtle hatreds. I didn't know all this. I felt it. I was afraid of being seen with my mother, who could be insulted for wearing a shalwar kameez. I was frightened of smelling like spices. I was terrified of being seen as a Paki. My childhood brain was only focused at all hours on keeping my English unaccented, my heritage undetected, my color unseen."

"An enormous amount of mental energy went into surviving, blending in, being invisible-and my real education had scarcely begun."

"By middle school, I had become adept at navigating the worlds of home, the mosque, and school-three codes of living, three modes of being, each with its own special language and rules that did not communicate to the others. Bu day, I was a son of the West, in my regular clothes, rapping to myself. By night, I was a Muslim, a son of the East, shape-shifting and prostrating before the one True God. My heart-isolated, fearful, terrorized-lay somewhere in the middle."

"My romantic, idealized image of America was already being born. I could feel a loosening in my chest, as though the gigantic, frenzied nation-this world beyond the barricades-was pulling me into its turmoil."

"As a boy, I thought Dada was just being a stern and grumpy man. But as I grew older, I understood the purpose of this lecture: that if we failed to walk the tightrope of the law and made a mistake, no one was going to come and save us."

"Although I knew that something made me different, and in this corner of our continent, as in many rooms I would one day enter, difference came with judgments."

"I had internalized somewhere deep that reading and learning were for other people. I was young and I was naive. I did not know myself, nor did any of the immigrant and first-generation kids around me. No common narrative bound us together. I was lost. We were lost. Aimless, rootless, without our own history, quickly going astray-and with no one to save us."

"Brown women were the real freedom fighters. They were waging covert wars, clandestine operations for liberty, blazing their own paths against the shameful culture of sexism that existed outside their doors, and the shameless misogyny that existed behind them. Honor, dishonor, shame, sharam: the roots of violence."

"I wondered later if every immigrant family was secretly unhappy, aware that theirs was a transient existence, aware that the kids would either justify the parents' sacrifices or be punished for them."

"He had the immigrant's mindset that higher education would allow me to escape the trap that had devoured his own life: dropping out to feed his family, sending his wages back to Pakistan, helping his relatives escape poverty in Pakistan or try to immigrate to the West, and never fulfilling his full potential."

"Higher education thus symbolized a kind of liberation, a mountaintop that no one in the family had yet reached."

"Obama showed me that books and knowledge were not for other people and that I could educate myself out of my empathy. Seeing him made me yearn for a different kind of life, one of learning and politics, a life of exploration and action. It was as though a circuit of two previously disconnected wires were brought together in my head, creating fireworks in my neurons. For the first time, I believed I had agency in choosing a new life. For the first time, I was aware that I could become someone else, a by-product of my imagination and not my environment."

"But I was young and uneducated to the fact that in this gilded world there were special codes of thought and communication."

"Because I was innocent, I did not appreciate the huge gap between where I was starting and where I was aiming. Despite the disappointment, I learned a valuable lesson: there was a cost to being unprepared."

"If there was one thing Brown people were good at, my father once said, it was bringing each other down."

"Here we were: the bastard sons of the West, congregating to destroy each other for sport in the middle of the afternoon. This was what the world wanted to us, to keep us fighting over petty beefs while the real power and knowledge and opportunities accumulated elsewhere, downtown, in the universities, in those jobs we would never get."

"Just as migration came with beauty and pain, so, too, did education. I was removed from all that I had known, sticking out in every room, in every class, lost in this village where I did not belong."

"We were forged by different circumstances and histories. The most privileged of them could falter and still land a job at their father's companies. If I got too complacent, I'd lose my scholarship and be right back in the old neighborhood."

"I was full of revolutionary fervor, ready to wage my own war of independence and become a republic of one: self-defining, self-sustaining, self-governing, self-creating. I would forget the past entirely and move upward in this big, white world."

"I was angry and didn't know what to do. I wanted to speak but could not find my words. I had come to believe that my feelings did not matter in this world, that my opinions were secondary to theirs. I had been taught that I did not have the right to feel hurt."

"My brown skin was an armor and a shield, one that I hid behind and concealed from myself."

"It was a great fault of mine, one I would struggle with as an adult: wanting the love of the very people who could never love me back."

"Ellison would lead me to Richard Wright and James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and Frederick Douglass, each one of these thinks becoming like my own family. I was not Black, but Black American literature would be my saving grace. Nor was I white, even if white European thinkers had constituted the entirety of my formal schooling. I was something in between, something amorphous, amphibious, a man who had to constantly improvise his name and his face in order to blend in."

"I devoured other thinkers and formed my own picture of a complex faith with a complicated history that had been reduced to bloodlust by Western propagandists."

"This world of home had silenced me for so long, and now that I had the words to express myself, I still could not articulate what I felt. And if I could not articulate myself to my own mother, then how free was I"

"Exclusion can be felt in the body, in the tendons and cartilage and the roughened skin, in the arteries and veins, in the lungs and the quickening heartbeat and the absence of words-but it was endured in the mind."

"Cried for the life I had lost, for how I had failed to be strong in the face of difficulty, cried for the future that would not exist. I cried for my mother and father, the hopes I had squandered."

"Despite my failings, I was still here, breathing. I still had the desire to hustle, knowledge in my head, immigrant blood in my veins. Still had the greatest of all gifts of those born to immigrant parents: the refusal to be extinguished."

"Though I needed these advanced degrees to prove myself, I was also doing what many minorities did when faced with the punishing standards of meritocracy: over-credentialize ourselves in the hopes that we could look the powerful white man in the eye one day, and say, Now you can't question my intelligence."

"We did not share our secrets or confide our sorrows, just prayed and plowed on with strength-until our bodies shut down."

"To hell with being twice as good! To hell with being twice as polite! To hell with being gracious to people who would do me harm. What had being nice ever gotten me but the ridicule of the white world?"

"Language fails precisely when it is needed most and the words do not come because the emotions do not permit them."

"He was the brash immigrant who was fearless in sharing his opinions, even if he valued safety above all else. I was the son of immigrants born on the soil who was willing to look beyond the safety nets and take risks in pursuit of my dreams. We were mirrors of each other in certain ways, both of us with big imagination that could be not curtailed by those around us."

"This was America, and I had come to understand that privilege and poverty lived side by side, separate but equal."

"I had come from nowhere, belonged to no one, and this very invisibility allowed me to be on friendly terms with everyone, willing to learn from and challenge all of them."

"Like every brown-skinned person, I owed a debt to the Black Americans whose emancipation presaged the liberation of us all: Black, Asian, Indigenous, Brown, and yes, white people, too, who had the most work to do to become free. Darker days might be ahead, but I would not succumb to fear. I would try to serve the legacies of those who had made room for me and, crucially, those who were coming next."

"I had pushed down the pain of slights and rejections and family dysfunctions and racial judgments for so long that, for a couple of years, I just disappeared."

[Merrill Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good one! I had been waiting a year to read this book after seeing it at a bookstore and skimming through its pages. My library finally came through!
So many truths, so many relatable moments: Omer’s book is a great opportunity to learn.

[Catalina Vieru · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and revealing memoir about the experience of not belonging in multiple cultures, the internal and external expectations on black and brown people to always prove their worth - and the reconciling of the self preservation pressure with the need to fight and make a change.

[Addison Burns · Rating 1 out of 5]

neo-liberal simping

[Sheldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish this book was available when I was younger when I was trying to find my story.

[Mahnoor Ansari · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first half was better than the second. As a Pakistani immigrant and a recent Canadian, I really wanted to like this, and although some stories were relatable, I ultimately thought it was a memoir written too soon.

I found the constant emphasis on the author’s hunger for knowledge irritating, for lack of a more polite term. It is just not a unique enough trait to be mentioned so many times and came across as filler.

I also really wanted this to be something—anything—other than the model minority trope that South Asians are so frequently burdened with, but it was not. The author’s lack of fighting back against any oppressive authority was truly outrageous at times.

One that stood out to me in particular was of a work event where a coworker hands Aziz a trash bag. Brother, why would you take the trash bag? As a brown woman (who did not have the privilege of a Canadian citizenship, unlike the author), I’ve definitely been in situations where I felt I could not say everything I wanted, but would never clean up the trash of a bunch of white elitists who I work alongside.

2.5*

[jiayue · Rating 4 out of 5]

a thought provoking, inspiring exploration of cultural identity and purpose. aziz takes us along his journey through the educational system and governmental bodies as he grapples with alienation, imposter syndrome, and systemic racism—struggling to reconcile his pakistani heritage with western ideals of whiteness and eurocentricity. as he ascends the social hierarchy, the readers are able to see firsthand the racial transgressions and barriers to success that he repeatedly encounters; with each rung of the social ladder he climbs, he is greeted with yet another obstacle (and its reverberating effects on his sense of self, motivations, and understanding of the world). regardless, he perseveres, eventually finding success each step of the way.

i aspire to be like this man.

(critique: at times felt a bit long-winded and almost self-indulgent, although rightfully so. he deserves it, if anyone. in my opinion, it just could’ve been shorter).

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thoughtfully-written memoir that explores the author's life and all the historical, political, and social factors that influenced his education and growth. He has a complex relationship with his family, and, by extension, his culture and religion that made the first half of the memoir highly-engaging.

The chapter on his time at Cambridge lost the narrative's momentum by only briefly mentioning interesting experiences - his travels abroad and meeting others across the world - at the end, while those scenes he did describe in full didn't fit the memoir's themes as well. However, after that, the narrative picked up again so that the ending, while maintaining ambiguity, still felt satisfying. Overall, I'm glad that I tried this one out!

[Alex Frazier · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the greatest compliment I can give to the memoir Brown Boy by Omer Aziz is that I keep telling other people about it, and that it has opened my mind so much so that I am reflecting back on it in my every day life on a daily basis. Omer Aziz is a first generation Canadian born to brown Pakastani immigrant parents. I am a first generation American born to white German immigrant parents. While I listened to my fair share of Nazi comments during my childhood in the 70's and 80s in a suburban Boston town, I could easily blend into the Irish-American majority with my Catholic faith, blonde hair and blue eyes. For Aziz, growing up in a post 9/11 world, regardless of his character, the differences of skin color and religion were always in the forefront of his mind, and those who he encountered. While, as a woman in my fifties, I am completely aware of racism and Islamaphobia, reading Aziz's memoir gave me the perspective piece I was missing. Aziz is a master story teller, holding back nothing while sharing a success story that, from the outside, sounds fantastic., which it is....but in our world of glossy-outsides and social media, looks can be deceiving. Giving the reader the back-story, the emotions, the introspection and, truly eye-opening, the level of discrimination even at the most educated, most respected levels of our society, it is a memoir everyone should read.

[Kieran · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book within one day - that’s how much I enjoyed this book

[Vikram Rao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book in a weekend. Omer is a great writer and his life story is full of adventure and high drama. I look forward to following his budding career as a writer and thinker.

[Antoniette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! It's going to take me minute to put my thoughts into words for this review... Deep breath.

I just finished listening to the audio (read by the author), and have tears in my eyes, goosebumps on my skin, and my heart is thumping in my chest. I haven't felt this way about a book in a long time.
Aziz has managed to put into words exactly what it feels like to be the child of immigrant parents, all the feelings, hopes, fears, struggles, etc. While my experiences have been very different from his, the power of Aziz's words allowed me to connect with him without effort.

This is a book I will be purchasing a personal copy of because I will absolutely come back to it.

[Ashly Shroyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this memoir, it was well written and powerful. Mr. Aziz's story was impactful by giving his unique perspective based on his experiences, which differ greatly from mine. It was interesting to see how some of his ideas and beliefs changed as he gained more life experience and spent time in other countries. I could resonate with the difficulties of leaving home and having different experiences than your parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles and trying to reconcile all of your feelings and interactions with your family.

Thank you Goodreads for having this as a giveaway, I was lucky to win!

[Craig Rowland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know Omer Aziz from the Mississauga Central Library and also from the nextdoor YMCA. I admired his passion for books as I always saw him reading in the library as well as in the gym. He was genuinely interested in what I was reading too. I am always enthusiastic to talk about books and while my tastes, as seen in my blog reviews, are all over the subject map, Omer kept more to the classics. I could see that he was reading from the panoply of world literature. He even took books into the Y’s sauna and I worried that dripping sweat would damage them. How could you read comfortably when the pages were turning into wet tissue paper? We also chatted about publishing and the sorry state of self-published works; thus I am glad that his memoir was published by Simon & Schuster [1].

Omer wrote about his life as a Canadian of Pakistani origin, growing up in Scarborough and then in Mississauga. His father is a secular Muslim (whom I still see every day at the Y) while his mother is strictly religious, so he was pulled in different directions all his life. After the world changed on 11 September 2001 Omer’s world changed too, as I am sure it did for all Muslims and for anyone whose skin colour was brown.

After years of unimpressive grades Omer had an epiphany during the 2008 presidential campaign. The leading Democrat candidate was Barack Obama, and seeing a man of colour speak so eloquently gave Omer inspiration to refocus his life on his education. He started an impressive campaign of his own to read the classics. He would eventually became a star student and won scholarships to Queen’s University, University of Cambridge and then to Yale Law School. I liked this memory he shared about how he found room for all his books:

“My father and I soon got to work building a study in the house. Since leaving for college, I had accumulated hundreds of books and had nowhere to put them. Together, we tore down a room, painted the walls light brown, and built a bookshelf. It was like I was back in those childhood days watching my father work under the hood of the car, me handing him tools. When the room was done, I finally had a place to study with my books surrounding me, each one a special purchase I had made from a used bookstore.”

This is the Omer I know: the voracious reader. His scholarships got him into good universities where he excelled (as in the above three locations) or failed (he wasted his time at the Paris Institute of Political Studies). In spite of the prejudices around him, where brown boys were considered threats and not academics, Omer worked tirelessly to prove himself as deserved of a higher education. The passages below show what he was up against. They also show that in spite of what others may have done to keep him down, he was also fearless in his pursuit of academia:

“What kind of dream had I been pursuing all these years, trying to educate myself out of my own skin, reading every book I could get my hands on, separating myself from my past, that in a single instant this stranger could put me right back into the box from which I sprang?”

and:

“Dada had never been close to anyone, but I realized how my father and I were not that different. He was the brash immigrant who was fearless in sharing his opinions, even if he valued safety above all else. I was the son of immigrants born on this soil who was willing to look beyond the safety nets and take risks in pursuit of my dreams. We were mirrors of each other in certain ways, both of us with big imaginations that could be not curtailed by those around us.” [2]

Brown Boy was written in a conversational style with reimagined dialogue. It was a seamless read where his jumping from continent to continent, as well as from university to university, never seemed to be impulsive. He shared his reasons for choosing each institution, weighing the pros and cons over other locations and we eagerly awaited the mail delivery containing each acceptance letter. It would have been far easier to create a memoir that stuck to a timeline: first I went here, then there, then dropped out in Paris then did this… and it would have ended up a boring read. With Brown Boy I was always looking forward to Omar’s next academic adventure and professional success. He is an inspiration to us all.

[1] Reputable publisher that it is, yet the proofreaders still let Adolph Hitler get by (instead of Adolf) and left adjacent alternate spellings of Grandad and Great-Granddad. Omer alternated spellings of imposter (p. 147 and p. 253) with impostor (p. 251).

[2] The final line in the passage above was quoted verbatim, thus could be not curtailed when I believe it should have been could not be curtailed.

[Jocelyn Bada · Rating 5 out of 5]

exceptional

[Bhavsi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brown Boy is Omer Aziz’s upcoming memoir. From growing up in Scarborough, Ontario (Canada) to exploring the world and what it means to be successful as an immigrant to his career trajectory, Aziz details a commonly uncommon experience.

Aziz writes about his experience as a first-generation Pakistani Muslim. He writes about finding himself and wandering off the beaten path. Aziz writes about what inspired him to work hard and become successful. He writes about family and how difficult the immigrant experience can be, one shared by many Canadians.

Before reading Brown Boy, I did not know who Aziz was. He is the former foreign policy advisor in the Prime Minister of Canada’s administration. His numerous accolades and achievements are clear indicators of his brilliance and hard work. His triumph in taking his career further than his family could have hoped or imagined for him is rewarding to read.

Aziz’s memoir, while insightful is a tad half-baked. It manages to grip the reader in some parts and distract in others. My stance on memoirs is that they are subjective in terms of enjoyment and entertainment. I feel indifferent in my reaction to Brown Boy.

Thank you to #SimonandSchuster @simonschusterCA @netgalley and Omer Aziz for my ARC of #BrownBoy . The book is available on April 4th, 2023.

[RobynT · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I really did, given some of the breathless descriptions of "luminous prose."

Unfortunately, its filled with a tendency to magnify every setback and portray the author as a victim in a way that detracts from the authenticity of their story. After a while it becomes tiresome and off-putting.

Mostly, this book seems to relentlessly pursue status victimhood. By exploiting real societal issues to elevate their own importance, the author undermines the credibility of his own struggles. It's his story and he can tell it how he likes, but it feels more like a calculated attempt to gain sympathy and recognition than a sincere sharing of life experiences.

[Bibi · Rating 5 out of 5]

With searing honesty, Omer Aziz writes a gripping memoir of his experiences as a brown person of Pakistani descent living in North America. His book resonates as I am familiar with the incidents referenced in the book as well as the locale of his early home.

When I read about Scarborough being touted as a rough neighbourhood, I feel that it gets an unfair label as there are some really nice sections with views of Lake Ontario and ample acreages. However, its residents are predominantly immigrants and that is so sad because it feels unfair as if its these people who account for the label and who often wind up on society's margins.

Back when Dad immigrated here, the borough was filled with working class white people. They began moving out as the immigrants and refugees moved in. Now the residents were mostly Black, Brown, and Asian.

Aziz writes about the conflicts he faces all his life. Early on, he tries "to be two people at once, part of two cultures, finding acceptance in neither. So I boomeranged between invisibility and presence, between misperception and clarified reality, always trying to blend in, chameleon-like, with my environment. I had become a hyphenated man..."

He queries the strict religious doctrine of his parents while trying to be an obedient son forced to attend Islamic school where he is given a good dose of eternal punishment, hell, and fear. The Mullanna who teaches at these school are not averse to slapping a boy for messing up his quaranic verses.

I trembled while reciting these verses whose meanings I did not understand because out of the corner of my eye, I could see the maulvi's chubby finger drumming against the edge of the table waiting for a mistake, his ring finger tap-tap-tapping against the wood. Suddenly, his hand came up ad struck me. I ducked. He tried again....

Mostly the students are subject to this tyranny but occasionally, "there was a Mullana Muhammad who was patient, caring, and never lifted his finger against any student..."

Aziz records his experiences candidly as he struggles to understand his imam who says music is haram; "religion was meant to give me purpose, a ready-made identity, but it was filtered through the interpretations of others, becoming another set of rules to get around." Aziz' mother is consumed with her faith and speaks no English so Aziz speaks to her in her native Pakistani tongue and speaks to his father in English. He begins to feel ashamed of his mother's hijab and his family's ethnic clothes. He detests the culture he sees at home and is ashamed even of the lunch he takes to school.

...my neighbourhood, my culture and community. I wanted to be everything they were not: well-read, cosmopolitan, English-speaking, secular...

Aziz goes through a rebellious phase where he hates school and doesn't even try. To his youthful eyes, his dad is dictatorial and to be feared. Love in the household is not demonstrated through words and hugs and it took years before Aziz realizes the stability and love and care his family provided. His best friend is a young Guyanese boy whose short life struck a chord with him even in his later years.

Without too much detail about the turnaround, the reader sees a troubled young man starting to apply himself; keen to make it in what he sees as the white elite world. He is hungry for what he refers to as real culture so he forges on to Paris and England. Stuck in a suburban Paris ghetto, he almost lost his way but miraculously emerges to journey on to England. Aziz realizes that his way out of his perceived morass is through education.

He completes an under graduate degree at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario and then through hard work and resourcefulness, Aziz attends Cambridge, and lastly Yale Law School. France, England, and the USA - his choices to acquire culture and become cosmopolitan. He reads profusely and enjoys academic debates on all topics. He did "what many minorities did when faced with the punishing standards of meritocracy' over-credentialize."

I read with keen interest his insights on America:

America was a nation with the soul of a church.

..I chalked this up to the democratic spirit of Americans, who were inclined to look favorably upon a young person who broke conventions and was hungry to learn.

Aziz' experiences are well articulated. His is a journey which is not fully unique and yet his narration is compelling; his conclusions carefully constructed. Despite his lofty academic credentials, Aziz slips into insecurity. He observes in upper echelon that "war and peace was dependent on the psyche of a few men". Men who are advisors. Aziz becomes an advisor and policy guy within the Trudeau administration, in the office of the Canadian Foreign Ministry. He has since moved on.

He seems restless possibly born out of the fear he carried all his life - fear of violence at the masjids, fear of violence in the ghettos of Paris, suspicion and potential violence from both Israelis and Palestinians as he travels to Jerusalem. A life of fear and racism has scarred this young man. His interrogation of identity, family, religion, race, and class can be cathartic for him. He is to be applauded for his courage to write honestly about his life so far. I found his memoir to be quite gripping and I think his memoir should be a must read for every immigrant parent and child. And for those who wants to understand the otherness of others.

[Bajidc · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's his memoir and he can relay his story the way he wants to but it did not call to me. I found more than one part childish, off-putting, naive, inflated, questionable. Meh.

[Virginia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wrote a very long review in my journal, but my cat is being a cat-straction and I'm really tired sooooo here is all of it abbreviated. At the end I go on a bit of my own tangent so you can skip the last paragraph.

This book, to me, was like The Jungle by Upton Sinclair if it just focused on immigrants and people of color. These similarities also reflect in both what I loved about this book, and what I didn't to a point. This book did have a larger dry period where I nearly DNFed it.

I liked the different perspective. Throughout his childhood Aziz talks about his environment his thoughts, that feeling of being different people in different environments. Despite being a polar opposite to him I felt like I related to him in some aspects. I also loved how masterfully it was written. That very first bit where we dive into his childhood had me drawn in and I was excited to see where it went.

Once Aziz has his Eureka moment is when I feel he distanced himself from what he wrote. It made the story drag, and I nearly DNFed it. I wanted to relate to his hardships but he didn't give us much to work with until Paris when he reconnected with the story and we got to see more of who he was and those thoughts and feelings.

After Paris the story picked up but then we get into my biggest critique and another similarity to The Jungle.

The Jungle

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair changed how I looked at the jobs I applied for. When I first read it I was working retail for a large cooperation. People were getting hurt, injured, and assaulted and management hid behind loose labor laws. I compared them to the meat plant from the book. Brown Boy had me reflecting on how I look at and treat immigrants and people of color. I pride myself on not judging anyone by their appearance but their actions, but am I treating people equally? How do my nieve comments come off? And yeah I'm a white American who grew up hearing adults use slurs as if they were nothing more than another adjective. As I got older I realized how horrible that was and have worked to educate myself and my family but this has me looking into my unconscious biases as well and just double checking before I act. It also convinced me to connect with people from different cultures around me, checking in with them. Honestly if I were one of his coworkers from the Minister's Office I would feel awful. I work really hard to be approachable and friendly, so being open to learning more about the people around me has become a goal of mine.

My problem with The Jungle was how the last 100 pages was basically a Socialist pamphlet. Here it wasn't 100 pages, but the last maybe 50 were spent talking politics. He spent a whole segment talking about how Trump acts like child as if we Americans don't already know. He touches on Climate change. Yes these are issues but they felt off since we hadn't been talking about that issue before. Let me hear about his opinions on American immigration laws, how Trump is villainizing immigrants in the media. Talk about how gun laws do/would change neighborhoods and schools like where he grew up. I want more connection to these issues and his childhood as a clean way to tie this together. Sitting here thinking about it, Aziz wasn't too preachy about it like Sinclair was. It was more like snide comments you hear from your parents woven into normal conversation like it wasn't out of nowhere.

Before I hope off I also would like to point out I read this book between 9/6/2024 and 9/16/2024, and currently live in Salt Lake City, Utah. If you are reading this from the future, or another state, or country Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in Orem, Utah 9/10/2024. He was a Republican influencer/activist. Afterwards everyone around me was talking about it. His opinions on gay marriage, gun rights, ect... Trump was the one who announced his passing on Twit- oh sorry I mean X like that's not cringe. So while reading about Aziz's opinions on Trump I was in the center of a hurricane that sounded like a lot of different opinions and political views on a man who's family hadn't even buried him yet. At that point I was so done with hearing about politics I just wanted to crawl into a cozy fantasy or more HP Fanfiction (yes that is where I've been all year) and never leave again.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I might come back to update this review later on, once I have more time to think about this, but here are my initial thoughts:

This book is a coming of age story, of a boy stuck between two worlds paving a path for himself through education. I liked hearing about his upbringing, and seeing the parallels between all the places he’s lived: From his run down birth place to Paris and Yale. I especially liked how he highlighted the racism that exists in “prestigious spaces” such as the prime ministers cabinet. It was also nice to hear about the authors appreciation for his parents growing as he aged.

Now on the downside, I thought this books portrayal of Islam was odd. Obviously this is a memoir, so the authors experiences with Islam are realistic because they are his own- however, I feel like this book was written for a non Muslim audience, so for him to skim the surface of his religious trauma, breaking away from “religious norms” by drinking and smoking week, and having haram relationships in his book, he opens the door to that audience to misinterpret the religion. The book touches on prejudice against Muslims, and in my opinion if I wasn’t Muslim and I read this book, I’d only be more confused about the group. It seems to me that it would potentially open the door for even more prejudice. Furthermore, although the author doesn’t need to share this with anyone, him choosing to commit his current relationship with his faith made the book feel incomplete since that was such a huge aspect of the book.

Like I said before, this book touches on the authors real experiences, so although the topic of Islam as touched on in the book left a sour taste on my tongue, I do still think this book is a powerful narrative on racism, class divides, and mental health.

[Maheen · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars, rounded up. Brown Boy is not really worth being called a memoir.

After reading the whole book, I have come to the conclusion that it is not Omer Aziz's brown skin that causes him problems, but rather the chip on his shoulder regarding his parents/father not being well-educated. He sets out to prove something to himself, but the degrees and learning cannot take away his basic internal insecurities because he doesn't address the real issues. I am a Pakistani-origin woman who was a TCK (third culture kid) growing up. I lived in 7 different countries, including the US and Canada, and never felt I was a victim of racism. My children are also TCKs and feel comfortable all over the world. My parents, siblings, husband, children and I all have multiple educational degrees, including Masters, MBAs and PhDs. So, as far as education is concerned, we are at par with the author. We are all the same color as the author (no mixed marriages, no white blood). Why is it that all of us have lived in the East and West and never felt victimized? The answer, to me, is very simple. It's because we have always known our worth. We never tried to hide our roots, never felt the need to appear subservient, never felt that anyone was better or worse than us. Poor Omer grew up in a dysfunctional family and community, and that shame has never left him. That's why he blames every setback on the color of his skin. If I ever met him, I would say "grow up, young man, and live the life you are so blessed to have". He talks about letting go of the past, but doesn't actually let go at all. I hope he can get professional help and live to his potential, because he has a lot to offer and people can benefit from his experiences and knowledge.

[Sphinxman84 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I so enjoyed Omer Aziz’s Brown Boy: A Memoir. In this work, Aziz explores the complexities of being the son of Pakistani immigrants living in the harrowing outskirts of Toronto, Canada—an area typical of the perils inner-city life—poverty, drug abuse, racial and ethnic tensions, and substandard schools. Aziz’s navigated his way through these challenges and ultimately has the opportunity to study as a graduate student at Cambridge and at Yale Law School where he received his Juris Doctorate degree. What I like about this work is how he explains his desire to know himself—“This above all, to thine own self be true.” He sought his truth by reading some of the most important books of the 20th century—Ellison’s Invisible Man, Alex Haley and Malcolm X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm C, and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. He also immersed himself in learning the history of the geopolitical struggles that has characterized the experiences of our Brown brothers and sister from British colonialism to the post 9-11 years, when our nation and world were plagued with anti-Islamic ideas that resulted in the victimization of Muslims throughout the world. This is an important memoir that let’s us know —to borrow the words of one of my favorite Muppets, Kermit the Frog—It ain’t easy being [Brown].