
Brown Girls (Hardback)
Daphne Palasi Andreades (author)- 10+ in stock

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 ... [is] a gift - a smooth subway seat on a crowded Queens local bound to everywhere ... This one's a ride - watch the open doors' - Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout
'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, Brown Girls fizzes with life. It left me speechless.' - Huma Qureshi, author of Things We Do Not Tell the People We Love
'A beautiful story of sisterhood... Daphne is a masterful storyteller and this is an absolutely breathtaking debut' - Sara Jafari, author of The Mismatch
'Brown Girls is a song-of celebration, of mourning, of rage, of fierce living. Palasi does for the present what Yoko Ogawa does for history' - Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Starling Days
'I swallowed this book and was swallowed by it in return. For those of us who were once teenage girls, it is an irresistible chorus of remembrances, a lyric ode to brown girlhood. I absolutely loved it' - Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here
'Riveting, powerfully observed, and seething with raw, exuberant life, Brown Girls is an epic told in the register of the yearning, vivid experiences of its characters. It's hard to think of another book with more spirit or a keener eye' Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun
'Exhilarating ... It is alive with the complicated yet vast love of immigrant mothers, American daughters, and childhood friends. I treasure this book's artistic daring, its pathos, and its marvellous playfulness' Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
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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
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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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