Brown Girls: A Novel

by Daphne Palasi Andreades

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A “boisterous and infectious debut novel” ( The Guardian ) about a group of friends and their immigrant families from Queens, New York—a tenderly observed, fiercely poetic love letter to a modern generation of brown girls.
 
“An acute study of those tender moments of becoming, this is an ode to girlhood, inheritance, and the good trouble the body yields.”—Raven Leilani, author of Luster

The New American Voices Award, The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, The VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, The New American Voices Award, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE PopSugar, Kirkus Reviews

If you really want to know, we are the color of 7-Eleven root beer. The color of sand at Rockaway Beach when it blisters the bottoms of our feet. Color of soil . . .

Welcome to Queens, New York, where streets echo with languages from all over the globe, subways rumble above dollar stores, trees bloom and topple over sidewalks, and the funky scent of the Atlantic Ocean wafts in from Rockaway Beach. Within one of New York City’s most vibrant and eclectic boroughs, young women of color like Nadira, Gabby, Naz, Trish, Angelique, and countless others, attempt to reconcile their immigrant backgrounds with the American culture in which they come of age. Here, they become friends for life—or so they vow.

Exuberant and wild, together they roam The City That Never Sleeps, sing Mariah Carey at the tops of their lungs, yearn for crushes who pay them no mind—and break the hearts of those who do—all while trying to heed their mothers’ commands to be obedient daughters. But as they age, their paths diverge and rifts form between them, as some choose to remain on familiar streets, while others find themselves ascending in the world, beckoned by existences foreign and seemingly at odds with their humble roots.

A blazingly original debut novel told by a chorus of unforgettable voices, Brown Girls illustrates a collective portrait of childhood, adulthood, and beyond, and is a striking exploration of female friendship, a powerful depiction of women of color attempting to forge their place in the world today. For even as the conflicting desires of ambition and loyalty, freedom and commitment, adventure and stability risk dividing them, it is to one another—and to Queens—that the girls ultimately return.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Coming Of Age, Audiobook, Race, Young Adult

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 4, 2022

About the author

Daphne Palasi Andreades is the author of the debut novel, BROWN GIRLS, which was selected as a New York Times Editors' Choice, an Indies Next Pick, longlisted for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, and shortlisted for the New American Voices Award. Daphne is a graduate of CUNY Baruch College and Columbia University’s MFA Fiction program, where she was awarded a Henfield Prize and a Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. She is the recipient of a 2021 O.Henry Prize, and scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, where she won the Voices of Color Prize, and other honors. She is at work on several projects, including her second novel. She lives in New York City. Find her on Instagram and Twitter at @DaphnePalasiA.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Daphne Palasi Andreades’ debut novel, Brown Girls, details the life of a collective of brown girls who have grown up in the “dregs of Queens.” It is structured as a collection of vignettes in rough chronological order and separated into five parts. Andreades notes that she writes with the “choral we”, and the entire book is told in that first person plural narration.

It’s ambitious, to tell the story of a collective of people this way. It can verge on gimmickry, moreso than even second person narration. I’d like to acknowledge that it takes a certain kind of audacity to even attempt this sort of novel.

That being said: this is mediocre art. There’s no two ways about it. It may be “necessary” in the way that some spots in a collective body of work might necessarily contain mediocrity. But in the end this book consists of watered down platitudes masquerading as art; lyricism without the searing, yearning, imagistic quality of good lyric work; vignettes without any of the compelling rationale behind them (for vignette done well, see Pik Shuen Fung's recent novel, Ghost Forest). It lacks insight into any of the really complicated (and thus meaningful) emotions aroused by the circumstances of her narrator/s; it traffics in cliches. The bread and butter of really good fiction is specificity, and Andreades’ use of the choral "we" elides all of this—the pain and beauty of difficult circumstances and relationships between individual people.

Andreades is Filipino, and yet she speaks for Jamaican and Haitian and Chinese (??) and black girls, subsumes what most people could consider the category “women of color” into that blanket term “brown girls”. This is in tension with the fact that it's quite clear that she is not speaking from a choral experience. Ironically, the choral “we” belies what is clearly a very intensely personal experience that probably does not cover the vast terrain she is attempting to; specifically, 2nd gen immigrant poc girls in Queens. She follows only the girls who go into specialized high schools (the vast majority attending regular ones are ignored—it's their brothers that go there!). She follows them on their trips to their home countries to “find themselves” (probably only something that primarily her ivy-league / specialized high school “brown girl” colleagues are doing). She chronicles their relationships with white guys (Andreades’ partner, conveniently, is a white guy. And how many of these “brown girls” are with white guys anyway? Most of them, the choral “we” implies. There's no indication that some of them—perhaps even many of them—are happy to not consider white dudes. And why are there so many white dudes in this book anyway?).

Okay, look, I’m not trying to be all “not all brown girls”, but it is clear that Andreades has not done the work that allows a person to use such a voice. It's a difficult thing to do, something that should be done carefully and bolstered by intense research to prevent its slide into cheap spectacle. Andreades may have the lived experience, but it’s not enough when it comes to using that sort of narrative voice. Racialized names substitute genuine research or experience (she uses this trick so much and it’s just not compelling). The refrain of “brown girls brown girls brown girls” substitutes creative, surprising usage of recurring language.

Something that really struck me about this book was its lack of imagination. For a lyric novel, this book does not contain a single compelling metaphor. There are no characters to give piercing insight into, only a puzzling girl who dies prematurely in an accident and is alluded to in an unconvincing manner. It’s just lazy, vacuous writing. Here’s a sentence representative of its style:

“Call each other up—Yo, Beret, Faiza, Xiu, Ashanti, Soraya!—though some of us haven’t spoken in months.”

And a particular egregious sentence: “Red, the color of 3-by-6 inch envelopes gifted to us as kids… Color of wedding saris. Or hell—however you choose to see it”. Like really? It’s just a litany of cliches. It’s also plain not a good sentence.

This is a book about brown girls, but it does not speak to brown girls, or at least to this one (at least as Andreades would—dubiously—categorize me). There’s the superficial outrage and name dropping of Amazon, Trump, and the pandemic. There’s even some lip service paid to queerness. But nothing is really furious. At best, this book might attract well-meaning, moderate-liberal white people hoping to diversify their bookshelves.

If you want to read some really good work about being brown in the outer boroughs of New York City, I'd recommend novels by Jacqueline Woodson or Nicole Dennis Benn or nonfiction by Sadiya Hartman. Brown Girls, unfortunately, falls short of its grand ambitions, and I can't recommend it.

[Angela M · Rating 4 out of 5]

It reads like a narrative poem, depicting the experiences of Brown Girls and I felt as if was there in “the dregs of Queens” with them because Andreades takes you there with her wonderful writing, introduces you to these Brown Girls born here of families from multiple places in the world, bonded by their skin

Connected by the place, their shared experiences growing up, prejudice and racism, their teachers not being able to tell them apart, their brothers going to jail for selling drugs and so much more. “We” as narrator, an ensemble of characters invites us into their daily lives, into their families, into their intimate thoughts and dreams . I found this collective narrative structure to be very effective at first given their common experience. Later though, when they go their separate ways, some coming back to Queens, reuniting, becoming mothers, later dying, I wanted more of individual character stories to connect with, rather than the collective. If it wasn’t for this distance, it would have been 5 stars . Having said that, this is an excellent debut with much to offer. Andreades is an author I will look out for.

I received a copy of this from Random House through NetGalley.

[BookOfCinz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A love letter to Black Women and I was here for ALLLL of it!

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you for the free copy, @randomhouse.

Have you ever read a novel written in collective first person? Brown Girls is just that penned by award winning author, Daphne Palasi Andreades. It’s a slim on pages, but hearty on power, story about a group of friends, all with immigrant families living in Queens, New York. The writing is lyrical and literally sparkles.

While the collective voice kept the characters at a slight distance, it didn’t matter because their collective voice is one that demands to be heard. The Brown Girls share their growing up years with the reader, how their journey is in some ways like any teen, but also how it differs through their unique experiences in immigrant families.

There’s much to discuss here, and Palasi Andreades is an author to have on your radar. We will definitely be hearing more from her, and I can’t wait for that.

Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

[Cady · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok lol I went off on a very long tangent here but tl;dr: As a "brown girl", this book feels like it was made to sit on a bookshelf of a white moderate/liberal woman in an attempt to diversify their reading.

I've realized, only very recently, that I've started to become tired of "the immigrant novel". So picking up this book probably wasn't a great thing to do, at least in my current mindset, seeing as this is all that Brown Girls is about. But the title and premise intrigued me, and I felt like I related to the premise and its characters being a brown girl from New York City, so I picked it up. Halfway through the novel, though, I started to feel emotionally fatigued. It's in no way the author's fault–the prose does contain some nice lines, and I like the vibrancy with which Queens is depicted–but I've started to wonder who, exactly, it is that we write these immigrant trauma narrative novels for. It's one thing to write from an immigrant perspective as a form of catharsis, to share your under-represented story with others and to allow yourself to be heard. That's fine. Everyone should be heard. But I can't help but feel that, at least in recent times, the "immigrant novel" has started to be written less so for the author's own sake and more for the purpose of satisfying the white gaze, or being for the white gaze. I recently read Rafia Zakaria's very excellent book Against White Feminism, in which she argues that in the contemporary publishing world, authors of color are expected to write about their trauma (specifically their immigrant trauma) because it is "their duty" to inform and educate the white reader. White readers are never boxed in with the expectation to write from trauma or the diaspora, yet it is all that people of color are seemingly expected to write about–to inform white people. I couldn't help but recall Zakaria when reading Brown Girls, a novel about a group of young women written in first-person plural who grew up in Queens, with the narrative following their lives through girlhood and beyond. While it is refreshing to read novels that I can identify with somewhat, I couldn't help but feel that certain passages of this book were written to educate and inform the white reader about what growing up in Queens as a brown girl feels and looks like. The author does a wonderful job in vividly describing the "dregs of Queens" and the sights, smells and sounds from the borough, but the first-person plural narrative felt both alienating and contradictory. Too many perspectives and lives were attempted to be covered and given attention to that I felt it was disjointed at times–in an effort to make the narratives feel diverse yet cohesive, there was a lot of distance. In an attempt to write about an unanimous sense of identity, I felt lost and disconnected. I enjoyed the more uncomfortable reckonings that the narrators had about themselves–the understanding that they are both simultaneously the colonizer and the colonized; that they are ashamed at how they've assimilated into white culture without realizing; how they feel alienated and "othered" as an American when they return to their home countries, while still also feeling "othered" as a daughter of immigrants back in New York. Some parts were infuriating to me, like when the brown girls visit their motherlands and are surprised at how they are surrounded by brown people who look like them; did you expect your native countries to be as diverse as America?! This novel also largely had no plot. Written in the form of lyrical prose, the "plot" is mostly structured by the women growing up, so there isn't really a climax or build-up to anything; it is just brown girls talking about their immigrant trauma, their trauma of being immigrant daughters, trauma of being women of color, trauma of being a woman of color in a very white world, trauma trauma trauma. There was so much immigrant trauma here, a lot of which I have experienced, to the point where I felt that I had no interest in reading about it, because I had already lived it. I don't really have an interest in re-living my own immigrant trauma, or any kind of trauma, for that matter. I just wonder who books like these are written for.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luminaries and lyrical …. a little like a rap song …..

“Our parents take us aside one night. ‘If anyone asks, we’re the only ones who live here, okay?’”
“Though we don’t fully understand, we know how to keep our families’ secrets”.
“When our cousins and aunts and uncles leave for new jobs and new cities—they are nannies and construction workers, cooks and caretakers—we feel a sinking sorrow. It doesn’t matter if we don’t share a drop of blood with these people; we have been taught to call them Family”.

“Brown girls brown girls brown girls who profess a deep, unshakable love for these boys who sometimes see them, but mostly don’t”.

“We have been warned by our mothers, about men who lure girls, force themselves onto girls, rape girls, mutilate girls, leave girls, now dead, in suitcases on the sides of highways or hidden in dumpsters to be found by somebody or nobody, men who keep girls as slaves for years so their families do not know whether they are alive or dead”.

“Even in song, we become fluent in the language of our colonizers. Our English, impeccable. Our mother tongues, if we were taught them at all, become atrophied muscles, half-remembered melodies”.

“No matter their zip code or tax bracket, listen as these white people deem us and our families the good immigrants, the hard-working ones—not like the lazy people in this country who are a burden on the system (It dawns on us that someone at our families have parroted these arguments too). No, we are the grateful brown people”.

“Some of us leave anyway. For universities— Berkeley, northwestern, UT Austin—across the country. Sayonara, New York! we say, I am fucking outta here! A few of us had to our cities Ivy League University dozens of Subway stops— practically light-years—away”.

“So what’s new with you? is the question we hope our friends who have remained in the dregs of Queens will ask when we visit, but never do. We have moved away from this neighborhood, have been gone for five years since graduating college. But our friends who’ve stayed anchored to the hood want to spend forty minutes talking about which of our old classmates got knocked up, yet again”.

“Brown girls brown girls brown girls who, in their bones, are beginning to understand that they are the sum of many identities, many histories, at once”.

“When you grow up, you’ll see, our mother said. As if, one day, we would suddenly understand why they were the way they were in our girlhoods: overly critical, casually cool, lacking imagination, close minded. Afraid. We vowed, then, never to become them. For months, which solidify into years, we do not call much. And when we do, we tell our mothers only what they want to hear, what we believe they can handle. Yes, work is going well. Yes, the children are great. Because to explain the truth of our lives—we’ve left our partners, we’ve decided to adopt, we’ve chosen to forgo children altogether, we are deeply unhappy—or happier than we’ve ever been—would mean, we think, our mothers forcing us to live another way”.

“In The US, disappropriate amounts of brown people are infected and killed. And yes some of us join them, too”.
March 2021: one year after New York’s first lockdown. Projected US death toll: 500,000 people”.
“But whatever, that’s not the point”.
“We die”.

Divided into eight parts…. Daphne Palasi Andreads gives us a powerful debut — at only 202 pages — with a chorus of soulful voices — an experienced any man or woman of any color can relate to — about families, home, friendship, hardships, adventures— but especially highlights and tributes to brown girls —

Brown girls >> you’re beautiful!!!

This is a wonderfully-felt impactful book.
I loved it!

[Emily Coffee and Commentary · Rating 2 out of 5]

An original series of reflections on the complicated joys and sorrows of being a brown girl in contemporary New York. Told from the collective voice of a close knit friend group in the “dregs of Queens”, we see the many sides of familial expectation, prejudice and assumptions, ambition, desire, and the pursuit of finding oneself. We see the enduring power of female friendship and the many ways that art, history, and tradition shape lives and decisions. A unique novel.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was nothing short of exquisite. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt as represented in a work of fiction as I have with this novel. Wonderfully and fearfully done!

Each chapter, though very short, reads like a poetic essay told from the perspective of all “brown girls” (women of color). I saw myself in so many of the anecdotes. I also saw my friends and family. Though the point of view mostly represents daughters of immigrants, I was able to relate in a sense that I am disconnected from my ancestral home but have been blessed to experience significant cultural elements throughout my life.

From desires to fulfill my own version of the American dream to questioning what that means for my family and my own lineage should I choose to become a mother, the book was so good at identifying my insecurities, fears, shortcomings and sources of pride. I’ll admit, I wasn’t initially sold on the format, but quickly grew on me and I found that I didn’t want to put it down. I adored this beautiful piece of work. 5 stars!

[jenny✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

i think this is a case of "it's me, not you".

from the intriguing blurb to the title to the gorgeous cover, brown girls was one of my most-anticipated releases of 2022. and, unfortunately, it didn't live up to the hype i'd built up in my own head - for a few primary reasons.

first, i wasn't personally a fan of all the (ethnic and non-ethnic) name-dropping; it felt like recitations of "diverse" baby name lists and in fact distanced me from the narrative, preventing me from connecting with the brown girls in question.

second, i didn't particularly enjoy daphne palasi andreades' writing in brown girls. in the past i have found myself enjoying unconventional novel(la)s that swing with the rhythm of prose poetry – for example, julie otsuka's newly published the swimmers - but something about the prose in brown girls felt, to me, humdrum and overly simplistic rather than poignant, clever, novel, or pithy.

lastly, i felt a little strange reading the choral "we" in brown girls, which, to me, seemed to flatten nuances rather than convey solidarity between an incredibly diverse range of brown girls. this might have something to do with the random, clinical, name-dropping, which i felt reduced the girls to faceless clichés. or maybe it's because the novel repeatedly mentioned superficial traits or emblems of different cultures (e.g., red envelopes, saris, margaritas, and phrases like "你好吗" (nĭ hăo ma) that felt incredibly stilted). to me, these emblems came off like buzzwords – at best, hollow gestures toward cultural diversity; at worst, stereotypes – and i wish the book had gone deeper and engaged more meaningfully with the cultural experiences of brown girls.

maybe this novel bit off more than it could chew? in my opinion, though it's not impossible, it is certainly difficult to speak/write for all brown girls in a way that captures the nuances that must be afforded each brown girl... and especially within 200-odd pages. but also i think i might be picking on a personal bone here - maybe, in deliberately choosing a shorter length, the book understands that it won't be getting at nuances and instead focuses on speaking to the collective experience of brown girls in nyc. i'm not sure. regardless, it didn't work well for me.

again, i think each of these things was a matter of personal preference: my own quirks not gelling well with this book. indeed, brown girls has already garnered several reviews by readers of colour who've really enjoyed and resonated with this novel, its characters and content and form.

though this wasn't the story for me, i'm curious to read what daphne palasi andreades publishes next!

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 4 out of 5]

we are the color of 7-Eleven root beer. The color of sand at Rockaway Beach when it blisters the bottoms of our feet. Color of soil. Color of the charcoal pencils our sisters use to rim their eyes. Color of grilled hamburger patties. Color of our mother’s darkest thread, which she loops through the needle. Color of peanut butter. Of the odd gene that makes us fair and white as snow, like whatsername, is it Snow White? But don’t get it twisted—we’re still brown.

Brown girls, brown girls, brown girls. Told by the collective “we” – this debut is alllllll about the lyrical prose. From elementary through death, these vignettes tell snippets of the lives of being a “brown girl” in Queens. Simply remarkable. The feeling combined with various city landmarks and the dropping of song lyrics weaves a “non-story” into a story seamlessly. Minor complaints are that every woman of color has been lumped into one voice which removes all individuality or cultural differences and that since the author is herself young the entries dry up when she doesn’t have her own life experience to draw from. I would have preferred that the book simply stopped at adulthood instead of an attempt being made to cover the entire lifespan. Still, such a talent!

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The word luminous popped into my mind as I read Brown Girls. The novel, written in the plural first person, is about brown girls of various ethnicities from Queens, NY. Andreades writes like a poet, beautifully chronicling the lives of her women. Although dazzling in its breadth, by the halfway point, I missed the depth that would have been gained if she had honed in on a few of the characters.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I devoured this book in one sitting. Daphne Palasi Andreades' poetic, contemporary fiction novel, Brown Girls needs to be mandatory reading in high school. I'm telling you now that everyone needs to read this. The story focuses on a group of women of color and their experience growing up in Queens.

The characters struggle with their family, both in terms of immigration and their traditional values, while also struggle with their place in American society. This book is less of a work of fiction and more of a long poem or monologue explaining these struggles. It's truly powerful and I think many will appreciate this type of story. As a cishet white male, I found the story to be very profound and powerful, as someone who can't relate or experience these types of societal and emotional efforts placed on women of color, especially women of color coming from immigrant families. This book is one big depiction on the microaggressions people face in the United States. I saw some frustrations about the author (who is Filipino) speaking about other ethnicities and cultures, but I think the reason why this book was so powerful was that it really showed how women of color, no matter their race or culture, tend to be put into similar types of situations. If you enjoyed My Monticello, you'll enjoy Brown Girls .

[Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful. 🩷

Brown Girls is a story delivered by a chorus of voices, all of them belonging to women of various ethnicities growing up in Queens, New York. They paint a portrait of childhood, adulthood, and what comes after in a beautiful tapestry of female friendships, pop culture, life aspirations, young love, and more as experienced by women of color.

These are women who grow up surrounded by people who speak multiple languages. Who are treated differently by their peers because of their race. And women who have to reconcile their family’s immigrant background with the American culture in which they come of age.

Many of these girls share the same dreams, but of course as they age, some of them grow apart. Some stay in New York and others venture beyond the city. Some ascend in the world and others stay amid their humble roots. Regardless of who they become, they share a connection to Queens and to each other.

Their struggles and triumph are rendered with rhythmic, poetic prose. And the ending is stunning.

Highly recommend if you enjoy literary coming-of-age stories. The audiobook is stellar too.

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daphne Palasi Andreades did something here.

The writing is on point, and although sometimes the story felt slightly disjointed to me, I felt like that feeling added character, because there was so much to focus on. Brown girls lives are full and Daphne made sure I felt that as a reader, and I appreciate this book for that reason!

I enjoyed the opportunity of following our heroines through their lives, loves, passions, family life, thought processes. It was Brown girls telling their stories, narrating their lives and living them to the fullest. All the contradictions were present, love and loss, the pursuit of knowledge and those who want to humble you -- though Brown girls fly high through it all, because what is the alternative? We don't even wanna know. It's in here tho. I really enjoyed it.

It was enlightening seeing New York City through these characters eyes, the viewpoints gave a prismatic quality to the story. The fact that the text was written like poetry was icing on the cake for me.

Highly recommend.

[daniella ❀ · Rating 3 out of 5]

as a brown girl, i relate to this book a little too much

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like 3.5 stars. Diaspora poetry vibes, powerful “we” voice, almost made me tear up at some points

[Resh (The Book Satchel) · Rating 5 out of 5]

multitudes in vignettes.
I listened on audio and it sounded almost like poetry. If you told me a collective first person narrative would be this interesting in long-form novel, I wouldn't have believed you before Brown Girls. What an ambitious creative leap by Daphne Palasi Andreades and she has landed on her feet, tall and strong.
4.5 stars

[Read In Colour · Rating 5 out of 5]

This reminded me so much of Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn. It would be a perfect companion read.

[Christine Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much that I immediately reread it. The choral "we" voice worked so well, and yet each girl's voice and story was distinct and unique. You root for all of the characters, and the descriptions (the airplanes flying low into LaGuardia! the sound of loud family parties passing on generations of gossip! seagulls circling above and popsicles dripping in the Rockaways!) are so vivid that it feels like you're in Queens with them, coming of age and experiencing all of the excitement and loss in this world in that overwhelming, all-consuming way that teenage girls feel.

This is also a really poignant and thought-provoking story of young women of color finding their place both in and out of the community they shared throughout their childhood. The writing is electric and these stories (of immigration, marginalization, racism, becoming an adult) are so so important -- it's the kind of book you finish and need to immediately discuss with somebody.

[Eduvigues Cruz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haven’t stayed up until 2am reading since March, so you know this one was sooooo good.

I saw myself in this book so much that it made my heart smile. It was warm, sad, important, inclusive. Had so many things I related to.

To all, you won’t regret reading this.

[lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

the best book I could have read while trying not to freak out about my first week in uni that turned out to be virtual. such an unique, distinctive book, a gem.

[Mira123 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dieses Buch handelt von Soraya, Ruth und Claire und von hunderten anderen Mädchen, Frauen und Menschen, denen bei der Geburt das weibliche Geschlecht zugewiesen wurde - zusammengefasst hier unter dem Begriff "brown girls". Ihnen gemeinsam ist nur, dass sie die Kinder von Einwanderern sind und sie im „miesen Teil von Queens“ aufgewachsen sind. Das war es auch schon mit den Gemeinsamkeiten. Trotz des Titels haben die Figuren nicht mal die Hautfarbe gemeinsam - denn "braun" bedeutet nicht gleich "braun". Wie hier in einem ganzen Kapitel beschrieben wird. Es gibt etwa eine Millionen Schattierungen und das alles kann man eigentlich gar nicht mit einem Begriff zusammenfassen. Das wird hier beim Lesen schnell klar - und trotzdem wird "brown girls" hier als Selbstbezeichnung das ganze Buch über verwendet.

Andere Unterschiede: Die Protagonist:innen haben unter ungesunden Familienstrukturen gelitten (oder auch nicht), haben die Schule abgeschlossen (oder nicht), sind dem miesen Teil von Queen entflohen (oder sind geblieben), haben Karriere gemacht (oder nicht). Es gibt nicht den einen klaren Lebensweg, der hier anhand einer Protagonistin vorgestellt wird, stattdessen zeichnet die Autorin mithilfe einer auktorialen Erzählerin ein Bild von so vielen Leben, wie nur in einem Buch beschrieben werden können. Sie erzählt von Armut und dem Kampf dagegen, von Identitäten, die durch Migrationserfahrungen geprägt wurden, von externem und internalisiertem Rassismus von klein auf. Die dabei verwendete Sprache ist überraschend lyrisch und erinnert an Rap-und Hip-Hop-Texte.

Wie in diesen Musikgenres üblich, wird auch hier eine informale Sprache verwendet und für Bücher ungewöhnlich oft geflucht. Das hat mich nicht gestört, da es zum Gesamtwerk passt, wird aber wahrscheinlich nicht allen Leuten gefallen.

Mein Fazit? Dieser Roman ist überraschend und ungewöhnlich – in seiner Sprache, in seinem Stil, in seiner Art, ein Leben als Person of Colour in den USA zu beschreiben. Das erfordert geduldige Leser:innen, die gewillt sind, sich auf ein solches Buch einzulassen. Ich persönlich war begeistert.

[Theresa (mysteries.and.mayhem) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brown Girls is different from any book I've read. It took me a while to realize that yes, it is a story with a beginning and end. The first few chapters felt like vignettes, or little odes to the dregs of Queens. There is no main character. There is no antagonist. There is only the collected "we" of Brown Girls.

The collective main character made it difficult to get pulled into the story. While I found it beautiful, I also found it difficult to stay interested in what the collective "we" was describing. I did enjoy the descriptions of New York. I love books that take place in New York City. Some day I'll visit. But until then, I'll continue to read stories that take place there, and just imagine.

I'm torn on the rating. It's beautifully written, but it didn't fully capture my imagination. I'm settling on three stars. I enjoyed Brown Girls and am very glad I read it. But I probably won't pick it up again.

[Nursebookie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brown Girls
By Daphne Palasi Andreades

Told in the first person collective thought in five parts, this anthem to brown girls' experience set in Queens NYC, of the American experience growing up from immigrant families. I loved the writing and feeling all the angst, emotions, and struggle - i thought this was a powerful anthem for the lived experiences of young women from diverse backgrounds.

I love supporting Filipino authors and I am so happy to see these books available for me and for my children.

[Vivek Tejuja · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reminded me so much of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, of course, barring the fact that in Brown Girls we are exposed to a variety of voices - of all brown girls trying to navigate and find their way in the world. While Cisneros's work was about the coming-of-age of one young girl, Brown Girls is the story of many. It also somewhere down the line becomes the story of the marginalised, the unseen, the unobserved, the ones who are struggling every single day to make their presence felt. 

Brown Girls is about young women of colour - across ethnicities, growing up in Queens, and it is their stories that are told from one chapter to the other.  This book also reads like a memoir sometimes - I am sure though some portions are reflective of the author's life. 

Brown Girls is a novel that speaks of the loneliness of young girls, the losses that they do not speak of, the secrets they don’t confide in anyone but each other, and the ones that are hidden even from themselves. It is a book of how brown girls are alienated and how they are almost given a handbook to be followed by their family and the outside world as well.

Andreades touches on female friendships that are cohesive, argumentative, disruptive, and extremely volatile. It is written in the style of a chorus of immigrant voices – of daughters living on the margins of the American dream. The expectations of parents, their own desires and hopes, and the world that doesn’t allow them those benefits is the crux of the book. It is also mainly about survival.

The writing is strong, unifying, sometimes speaking of identity as a whole, and sometimes right down to individuals. The complex nuances of race and identity surface with every chapter in a different way and compels readers to see what Andreades wants them to.

[Sacha · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

In this intriguing debut, Andreades relies heavily on a communal narrator - the titular "Brown Girls" - to transport readers into their lives and experiences in Queens and beyond. There are some interesting moments here, but this one never quite grabbed me.

The communal narrator comes off as too gimmicky, but the bigger issue is two-fold. First, it's extremely difficult to connect with or become invested in any one character. In fact, the one character I did start to become invested in was instantly dead after she was named, so that wasn't particularly helpful. The second and more significant issue is that while I think the goal is to reflect community and shared experience, this read instead like a generalizing and oversimplification of ALL of the experiences of women who identify as part of the titular group. There are attempts to differentiate, but they are infrequent and not quite meaningful enough to distinguish these women as individuals. I had an insidious feeling of discomfort the whole time I was reading as a result of this feature.

While the content and format really fall into a two-star category for me, I will come back for more from this author because I think there is a lot of stylistic creativity and story telling ability floating underneath my gripes with these specific choices. I'll hope to see more character development and less generalizing in future installments.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House for this arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.

[Wing · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is ambitious; the author assumes a collective, lyrical voice that seems to speak for all brown girls from Queens New York, millennials if I had to guess. But in trying to speak for everyone, it does so clumsily and ends up saying nothing. It traffics in cliches and stereotypes about bipoc folks, the kind that Hollywood producers lean on for simplistic broad-brushed characterizations, for cheap laughs, and for contrived exaggerated contrasts with "mainstream society" to manufacture dramatic tension. And it seems that author uses "brown girls" to refer to non-whites, including Asians, which I found a bit odd. And all those references to Queens as the "dregs of Queens" I find offensive as someone who is from this culturally rich borough. I can't imagine what people who have never set foot on this borough or who don't know it as well as someone from this area, might think of it after reading this book.

After finishing the book, one of the things that crossed my mind and I found unbelievable was how the manuscript passed through so many hands and probably went through so many workshops, and yet here we are left with this failed product. I really feel embarrassed for those in the acknowledgements and who gave a blurb on the book jacket. It's that bad.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written (not surprising all the accolades Daphne Palasi Andreades has received), this debut, told in a collective first person, masterfully recounts the experiences of the second generation of girls growing up in the "untrendy part of Queens." Known as the most diverse of the five boroughs and a melting pot for immigrants, particularly if newly arrived and seeking some familiarity among the strangeness of a new home, resting their hopes upon their children. Described as "good girls," they follow the rules but also act out in the way of teenage girls everywhere, and the sections follow their progression through life, many realizing the dreams of their parents in following the promise of education and assimilation into the promise of America. There is even a visit to their original homelands even if they were born in America, and introduction to families never previously met in person. Reaction to tRump's wall, the horrendous immigration practices of that Administration, and the advancement of Covid are all addressed. Not surprising, given that the Elmhurst Hospital in Queens was featured prominently on the news particularly during the pandemic's early stages. By utilizing first person plural throughout, Andreades underscores the universality of the immigrant experience and its fallout on the second generation.

[Kaiomi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was quite boring to me and honestly gave me bad vibes. I really wanted to like this book but had too many qualms while reading. I think this is an ambitious piece of work and maybe I'm being a bit harsh but I'm shocked at how good the blurbs are compared to what I actually read and ingested.

Told in the "we" perspective, this was poetically written. Without any real characters to connect with, I found myself disinterested. I also found myself feeling like this was written for a white audience...idk if felt very diaspora poetry vibes lol. Also the pacing was not great.

I'm also not convinced of the author grouping so many ethnicities under the umbrella of "Brown girls".

I'm left really disappointed in this one given the hype and how it was sold to me.

A book I recommend instead is Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson.

[Julia Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Symphonic