Brown Girls (Hardback)
Daphne Palasi Andreades (author)Published: 03/02/2022
A lyrical and powerfully observed collective coming-of-age, Brown Girls follows a group of young women of colour navigating their way to adulthood in Queens, New York, armed with joy, yearning and an unquenchable thirst for life.
A fiercely poetic coming-of-age novel following a group of young women of colour in Queens, New York.
If you really want to know, we are the colour of 7-Eleven root beer. Colour of the charcoal pencil our sisters use to rim their eyes. Colour of peanut butter.
Brown Girls dives deep into the lives of a group of young women of colour growing up in Queens, New York. Here, streets echo with many languages, subways rumble above dollar stores and the briny scent of the ocean wafts in from Rockaway Beach. Here, girls like Nadira, Gabby, Naz, Trish, Angelique, and many others, struggle to reconcile their immigrant backgrounds with the American culture they come of age in. Here, they become friends for life. Or so they vow.
In this bold debut told in a uniquely lyrical voice, Daphne Palasi Andreades paints a stunning collective portrait of the journey from girlhood to adulthood, set against a backdrop of race, class, and marginalisation in America today. Brown Girls is an unforgettable love letter to women of colour everywhere from a daring new writer.
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780008478056
Number of pages: 224
Weight: 340 g
Dimensions: 222 x 141 x 22 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Brown Girls achieves immediate lift-off … [at] times, audaciously, it’s as if she’s talking about every brown girl alive during the past century … Fearless' New York Times 'Strikingly exuberant … The book certainly has spiky, thought-provoking things to say … but it is most memorable in its gorgeous depictions of friendship. It is also an incredibly moving meditation on growing up … This gives a novel set in Queens a powerful universality’ Independent ‘Attracting huge amounts of buzz … a fierce examination of race, class and marginalisation in America today’ ipaper ‘Brown Girls flows like a late night FM-radio dedication to the crew, the block, and the mission … This book is a gift’ Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout ‘Transporting and energising … it’s not to be missed’ Stylist ‘Glorious … While there is much that many brown girls will relate to—including experiences that feel stolen straight from my memories—Andreades succeeds in making the stories feel specific beyond a singular experience … breadth, depth and enormous richness’ New York Times Book Review ‘An acute study of those tender moments of becoming. An ode to girlhood, inheritance, and the good trouble the body yields’ Raven Leilani, author of Luster ‘Brown Girls is filled with an unforgettable cast of characters …Precise and powerful, this is a coming-of-age story for us all’ Nikesh Shukla, author of Brown Baby 'A heady, poetic exploration of growing up … It left me speechless' Huma Qureshi, author of Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love ‘Brown Girls is a song—of celebration, of mourning, of rage, of fierce living’ Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Starling Days ‘Seething with raw, exuberant life … It's hard to think of another book with more spirit or a keener eye’ Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun
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“Frank, poetic and wonderful..”
A wonderful homage to women of colour written in lyrical prose, this debut novel should be on everyone’s reading list. Even though it is set in America, this book will appeal to all every girl or women as it deals... More
“Wonderful”
Written in the 'choral we' this novella, is visceral storytelling about brown girls growing up in Queens, every detail of their lives are recorded, just as teenagers would describe their lives. Daily micro... More
“A love letter to black girls”
Beautiful and evocative. Painted a gorgeous picture of a world I have never lived in. Andreades' writing is poetic but is well grounded. There is a strong sense of self in these short snippets of life in the... More
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