This was a powerful and beautiful book. While it's characterized as a novel, it feels more like a series of chronological, connected vignettes. It's told from a collective voice, which is a unique narrative device that makes the story feel very inclusive. I didn't know that's what it was going to be going in and once I realized, I wasn't sure if I would like it but it was compelling and, at the beginning, it actually make the story more fast paced. Though, toward the end, it didn't hold my attention as strongly. The social commentary is very subtle in places but always pointed.

While much of the story is not *for* me as a white woman, it was intensely relatable - especially in the earlier parts of the story.

"We grow dizzy at their advice, at their, what do you call it? Love."

"sure the dinosaur bones are cool but, more than this, the museum is air-conditioned and donation-based, which, to our fourteen-year-old ears means free."

"We are fifteen, and are learning to memorize the subway lines as if they are the very veins that run through our bodies."

"At school, we learn things we're certain our parents don't know, never had the time to learn."

The language is lyrical and the imagery is vivid. I was often able to picture myself right there in the moments.

I really liked this debut novel. The vignettes show one girl’s experience growing up in the “dregs” of Queens. The girls come from so many different countries, Alll have families who come to live with them from these countries for lengthy periods of time. These girls are all the shades of brown possible. The writing is descriptive as she talks about things like picking a high school to attend. What the reader leaves with is the shared family of immigrants. She showed me a world of which I knew nothing. Even though I never really connected with any of the characters, I’ll view my next visit to Queens and riding Train 7 differently as I move thorough so many cultures.

What a beautiful book! Brown Girls is a love letter to Queens, a love letter to women of color, a love letter to identity, Written in the collective we, and told through chronological vignettes, Brown Girls reads like a long poem that guides us through the lives and experiences of these women growing up in the “dregs of Queens.” I just loved it.

Young brown girls growing up in Queens encompass a variety of eclectic experiences. As the girls grow up, they're told to be good girls, to follow the rules, to listen to their mothers. Some of the girls follow those directions, but others leave the borough as they try to find a place for themselves in the world. Sometimes this takes them all over the world, and sometimes they circle back to Queens all over again.

This debut novel is written as a series of vignettes, so it's easy to take it in smaller pieces. Some of the pieces make me incredibly nostalgic for the Queens I grew up with, from the signs and the "Boulevard of Death" reference, the push for education in specialized high schools, the description of the myriad neighborhoods and people within. Many fragments are told from the immediate-yet-distant "we" narration style. At once we're part of this experience, taken into confidence and kept somewhat separate by the fragmented sentences that turn experience into sensory snippets. The "brown" runs the gamut of ethnicities and races, and the universality of these snippets means there isn't a single ethnicity represented. Instead, it's the moments that stress girlhood and being not-white that are stressed.

I think some of this is done in a deliberate way; that becomes very clear with "Musical Chairs." Teachers mean one girl but call her by another's name because they can't tell the brown girls apart. They don't know if a girl is Pakistani or Guyanese or from the Ivory Coast or Spanish or Chinese, or any other darker-skinned ethnicity. The earlier discriminatory behaviors are in sharp relief then, and it's an additional constant along with the subtle digs at being a girl. Those aspiring to be more are picked on, and growing up is difficult when the girls don't feel like others understand their experiences and there are few role models to look up to.

Different phases of life are separated into different parts of the book, which is an interesting way to do it when this isn't written with a clear three act structure in mind. The plaintive "nobody looks like us" is haunting, mirrored throughout the snippets involving dating, attending school, and thinking about family, whether in or out of race. So much of this book rang true, and the branches of possibility between the "us" of narration is a wonderful tactic to show the ways that these girls are the same even when paths are different. The familiarity continues even into the paths that aren't like my own, and I enjoyed seeing the directions that girls can take. It's a thoughtful and interesting way to present the many experiences of minority Queens girls. You can take the girl out of Queens, but you really can't take the Queens out of the girl.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

The book is written from a "we" point of view of multiple "brown" girls growing up in the "dregs of Queens." The author does an excellent job of describing the difficulties and hardships families face when moving to this country from a variety of foreign lands. The girls are all new immigrants or first generation Americans. They worry about acceptance, school, dating, college, and careers. Are they viewed differently because of their colors, accents, and backgrounds? Do they have the same privileges as their white counterparts?

Some want to get out of the neighborhood to explore different cultures and possibilities. Others are more content to stay where they are. If they should leave, will they lose their ties to their culture, their families and friends?

This ARC was offered in exchange of an honest and impartial review:
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5*
Pros: The first and I already know my favourite book of this year. In spite of its shortness, it is a detailed and intricate portrait of life as a woman of color. Astonishing how many themes are approached in this masterpiece: growing up in poor communities, complex and flawed family and love relationships, generational trauma, societal pressures and expectations, struggling with mental health, identity crisis, self-love and self-understanding... The author managed to highlight many universal and still incredibly specific experiences women of color have gone through, in a way that regardless which country/continent you descend from or the shade of your brown skin, you will feel seen and understood, even to your darkest thoughts.
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Cons: Absolutely none, a must-read.

Good for middle school to high school age. I read 18%. If it continues as it has, a very quick read and an easy three to four stars. The right reader would give it five.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the ARC.

I LOVE the plural first person narrator and I hope authors continue to use this style. The author uses that structure in this book perfectly and effectively. This was a quick but poignant and important story. So much of it read like poetry, which I particularly love.

Brown Girls is a beautifully poetic and incredibly original novel - exploring the varied experiences of brown girlhood from a young age well into adulthood. Because of the collective "we," it felt too generalizing at times and I felt that it was harder to connect with individual characters as no one's story or experience is ever exactly the same. But overall the "chorus of unforgettable voices" come together for a truly ambitious debut novel. Very grateful to Random House and NetGalley for the chance to read this novel.

what a beautiful, emotional, touching story on what it means to be a woman of color in the US, and specifically a brown one. i'm chinese american and i'm not from queens, and yet i felt seen and related to many of the experiences of the women in this book, and i know that my friends and family from the city will relate even more. a joy to read. thank you for this catharsis!

This is a sweeping, lyrical debut of a modern coming-of-age story centering brown girls of immigrant families in Queens, NY. It doesn’t focus on plot or, really, character, but is instead filled with those tender observational moments of life’s little joys and hypocrisies.

I really enjoyed the pace and atmosphere-setting of this book and how it seemed to capture whole lifespans in such a short, sweet package. I was not personally a fan of the “we” chorus narrative perspective, but that may just have been me.

Brown Girls is an ambitious coming-of-age story about the lives of the “Brown Girls”, a group of young women growing up in Queens. Told in first-person plural, this story follows these women as they grow up, go through high school and college, get jobs, have children of their own, and die. There are characters mentioned by name but for the most part, the story focuses on their varied yet similar experiences as a collective. Touching on the experiences of POC women, immigrant families, and gentrification, Brown Girls feels quite timely. Lyrical and well-written, I was often moved by the prose. 4.5 stars.

A unique work of fiction (based very much in fact) told in an equally unique voice. The eponymous brown girls in the title are primarily high-achieving young women who grew up in an immigrant Queens neighborhood. As many of them attend rigorous high schools, go on to college and careers, they face many of the same problems—their relationships with their family and ethnic heritage, how they define and inform their trajectory, and how every success will be measured against expectations and guilt for leaving some behind.

It’s hard to summarize this book. A lot of it will be relatable and all of it should be eye-opening as we examine our privilege and prejudices. #BrownGirls #NetGalley

Thank you to the author, Random House Publishing Group, and NetGalley for an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

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.

What Daphne Palasi Andreas does with this “novel” is just a bit short of astonishing. However, I felt very mislead going into the book. Based on the synopsis I read, I expected a coming of age story about a group of friends. Yet, what we got was a lot more. This is not a book about one group of friends. This is a novel, that feels like a series of short stories, about many Brown girls and many friendships. This book almost feels like a primer on Brown, immigrant girls and New York City.

Brown Girls is poetic and lyrical. But what I loved most was the exploration of the lives of Brown girls. There are Brown girls of Asian, African, Carribean, Latinx descent. There are Brown girls who are not even sure they are Brown girls and Brown girls who are queer. These Brown girls get to have love, doubts, and aspirations. They get to BE and I’m a little amazed at how this very small book does justice for an entire segment of the population.

I read this book in one sitting and it was worth it. Daphne Palasi Andreades has written a helluva first novel that is altogether lively, funny, heartbreaking and just plain great.

The book is aptly named. The author takes us for a ride inside the lives of the Brown girls of Queens, New York, a vibrant and diverse city within the five boroughs. Queens is home to many immigrant families who want to live the American Dream. The Brown girls are followed in the novel from junior high through old age, living lives that start out one way and end up being completely different from what they and their families expected. The girls not only have the expectations of their immigrant mothers and fathers on their shoulders, but also the burden of being girls in a world that does not value them. Their romantic lives are just as complicated, if not more so. They struggle with trying to date whomever they want while being crushed by the pressure their families put on them to stay with their own kind.

Brown Girls is a fast read but does not leave readers unsatisfied. Although I did not grow up in an immigrant household, I could relate to many of the events and situations that happen in the novel. I truly believe women and girls of color will see themselves in this book, something so many of us desperately need.

The blurb describes BROWN GIRLS as a poetic love letter to a modern generation of brown girls. I agree. 

Told in a choral “we” voice, BROWN GIRLS is the story of a group of young women of color growing up in Queens, New York. BROWN GIRLS captures the collective and individual experiences of their childhood, high school, and adult years through detailed imagery.

If you are a POC, BROWN GIRLS will speak to you regardless of whether you grew up in Queens. BROWN GIRLS conveys the complex feelings and emotions that come with grappling with identity, being caught between two worlds: the “colonized” and the “colonizer,” and navigating white-dominated spaces.

BROWN GIRLS speaks to the hypervisibility and invisibility of POC. 

“We gain recognition for our work. How does it feel to have achieved SO MUCH as a Woman of Color in your field? What does Your Community think of your work? (Are you their hero, villain, savior?) (...) Nobody asks about the work itself. We are so visible we have become invisible. Odd that this moment we dreamt of, we are faceless.”

The part on interracial dating feels all too familiar.

“But some of our friends don’t understand; instead, they imply that we are self-hating for choosing white partners, that they themselves are better for picking brown. But is anything ever that simple? Many of us are merely women who have tumbled into love. Who must learn to balance history with the individuals standing before us.”

Daphne writes with tenderness, warmth, and vulnerability. I’m in awe of the range of tones—fierce, sarcastic, introspective, heart-wrenching—this book is testament to the power of the written word. 

Let this book heal your (heavy) heart 🫀 during these trying times 🤍

"Why did we ever believe home could only be one place? When existing in these bodies means holding many worlds within us. At last, we see."

What a gorgeous, gorgeous novel. Told in the choral voice of "brown girls brown girls brown girls" from Queens, this short book follows their lives from childhood to adulthood, including the myriad paths the girls take in between. The book is incredibly specific and widely applicable at the same time. These brown girls represent many distinct cultures (specific foods, traditions and languages are mentioned throughout), yet at the same time, the book so perfectly encapsulates the essence of American girlhood that is their (our) shared experience. As a white reader, I know this book was not written for me, yet I think anyone who has been a girl will find something that speaks to them, and I hope it speaks to brown girls most of all.

A poetic love letter of Brown girls growing up in Queens. This books reads at a lightening fast pace. These girls grow to women all dealing with what it means to be an American, while holding on to their immigrant values. It points out what it means to be a daughter, cousin, friend and being a part of a community, while finding their true selves. All to the soundtrack of Mariah, Destiny’s Child, and Whitney.
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They do their best to find their own paths but sometimes the paths lead home.
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This book is available now.
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Thank you @randomhouse and @NetGalley for an advanced copy.