An important read! I’ll be recommending this book over and over. I can’t wait to discuss this with my book group - a definitive sign that I loved this one! I’ll be keeping my eyes on this author! Brava!

Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades is a fresh spin on putting culture into current fiction. Instead of being a comprehensive deep dive into one particular character's story, it weaves a tapestry out of all the common threads brown girls in working class Queens experience. The length and structure of the chapters evolve as our characters grow, while still maintaining a rhythmic flow to the words. I particularly like the all the sections where Palasi Andreades Goes There by writing about the sexual harassment of young girls, the passive aggressive and outright aggressive racism one experiences when in a primarily non-brown environment, and the little microaggressions that would be so easy to brush off if only they didn't happen too often. Brown Girls have read enough books by white authors; it's time they got a taste of things from the other side. (I received a free copy from the publisher via NetGalley.)

I thought this was a really great book that was raw and emotional. This book is the story of a group of “brown girls” and told fr the plural “we.” It was an interesting choice for the author and although it can sometimes feel off-putting in the sense that it feels like one person speaking for all, I can understand why the author did it. I felt like it worked for this story and ended up really liking it. This was a great book and I’d definitely recommend to others!

Excellent writing, a great look into the world of a chorus of "brown girls" and their lives in New York City. The author weaves individual tales using a plural, first-person narrative that captures readers right from the beginning. Recommended for readers who have ever felt the odds were stacked against them and/or lovers of the city that never sleeps.

What a spectacular, thought-provoking debut. I wanted to tear through this short novel, but forced myself to slow down and properly appreciate Andreades' gorgeous poetic prose and her incredibly important commentaries on what it is like to be a first generation American woman of color. I will be re-reading this one in the near future and am so grateful for the ARC. So so impressive!

I was absolutely taken with this book's start, "We live in the dregs of Queens, New York, where airplanes fly so low that we are certain they will crush us. On our block, a lonely tree grows. Its branches tangle in power lines. Its roots upend sidewalks where we ride our bikes before they are stolen. Roots that render the concrete slabs uneven, like a row of crooked teeth. ... In front yards grow tomatoes that have fought their way through the hard earth."

There's more poetry as Andreades's story of third culture brown girls coming of age unfolds. Sadly, the first person plural narrative put me off, and I didn't finish the book. I hope others, with more of a love for experimental storytelling will get out of the novel what I didn't.

Brown Girls
I felt this book was like a beautiful gift in an ugly package. Brown girls are any non white girls growing up in a diverse community in Queens NY. I found this book was so many things, coming of age in a society struggling with race issues, sexuality, relationships between immigrant parents and their American born children, mother daughter connections and much more. The story follows the Brown Girls from middle school to their adult years, many themselves becoming parents, many chose to remain childless. Some achieve success in spite the odds against them, some not so much. Their brown brothers struggle with drugs, get arrested and go to jail, others become cops or make it in the corporate world. Some move far away from their neighborhood, some remain where they grew up. I appreciated all the issues this book raised but I didn’t like the plural WE first person narrative. It made these Brown Girls the stereotypes, we would like to get away from. Overall, the book grew on me, 3.5 stars, rounded to four.
Thanks NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the advanced copy.

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.

Really enjoyed this novel that reads almost like a short story collection where all the stories are related to each other and move sequentially. These are everyday stories of brown girls and women from adolescence to adulthood and what I really loved about it is that the author was able to show how unique all the women were from each other, but also made it universal to some of the collective experiences of women of colour.

Some of the topics covered included racism in America, belonging and acceptance, and expectations of family as women and children of immigrants (re: work, relationships, social expectations). It also touches on what it's like being children of diaspora and occupying that middle space between cultures. What is home? Is it America? Is it our parents' home country?

It is also particularly special being set in the borough of Queens and addresses some outcomes of growing up in a multicultural community. Many of the women grew up there with the dreams/desires/need/responsibility to leave it, others stayed, and others came back. It also talks about how as some of the women got older, advanced in their professions, and left the community, their personalities began to change, slowly blending into whiteness and growing increasingly disconnected from the communities they once grew up in. These stories were so relatable and makes the reader ponder so many questions and thoughts related to the intersections of womanhood and cultural diversity.

Something I wasn't expecting was the inclusion of East Asian women and their experiences in the story. Conventionally, East Asian women are seen as POC but not classified until "brown" people whom are typically Black or brown skinned from the Caribbean, South and Central America, Africa, Indigenous, India and the Middle East and other parts of Asia. I wonder if "Brown Girls" is used to encompass all women of colour as the title.

A few spelling errors I noticed while reading but I'm sure they will be fixed by the time the novel comes out! Really enjoyed this, it was super relatable and easy to read. Can't wait for it to come out as I will be recommending it to many people.

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

From Queens to the Motherland, these brown girls, unnamed, separate yet together, declaim vignettes of what it means to be girls and women of color.

Stunning!

4/5

In this luminous and heartbreaking and tragic and funny collection of vignettes, brown girls--narrating for themselves in the first person plural--chronicle their lives from children to adults, from first crushes to marriages, from school to traveling to their ancestors' homelands. This is a book that made me think and that taught me a lot and that I would love to see taught in schools and read in book clubs and read on the beach and read everywhere. These are real stories, real lives and decisions, all shaped by identity and surroundings. It's a stunning, poignant masterwork.

A collective novel of women of color growing up in Queens and the various directions their lives take.

This was one of the best and most unusual novels I’ve read in a very long time. It is the story/s of girls growing up in Queens. They are all extremely diverse and go in many different directions. They also take the reader on an emotional, memory filled (I am the white daughter of an immigrant mother and first generation father) ride with them. Thank you. It was wonderful. Thanks to Net Galley and Random House for an ARC for an honest review. Particular thanks to Marie Pantojan, the Editor, for introducing a life long reader to this author.

What a propulsive read! Where to start?

“Brown Girls” is Daphne Palasi Andreades’ debut novel. She has talent oozing out of every pore. “Brown Girls” exceeded my high expectations. There is so much there.

I happened to read “Brown Girls” the weekend that we ventured out to a real movie theater for the 1st time in forever because we just had to see “In the Heights” on a big screen. While the comparison to “Brown Girls” is not perfect, it is very apt. Land of Opportunity. American Exceptionalism. Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. Work Hard and Get Ahead.

It’s all about the struggle that is so hard to describe that it’s oftentimes best to not even bother. Especially not to those that have not lived it. You can’t describe the slights, the micro- (and macro-)aggressions, the need to be twice (or a hundred times) as good, the push and pull of staying vs. leaving. The lure of quick money on the street. Getting caught, ruining lives. Being good when it’s never enough. Marry up, marry down, don’t marry at all. Having children. Doing it differently this time. Who am I? What am I? Where do I belong?

It wasn’t solely the content that made the novel so energetic and compelling, it was also Andreades’ technique. The most notable is that the stories are most all narrated in snappy 1st person plural segments. While I often have problems with that, it works perfectly here. It is not individual storylines that you are compelled to follow, it is the collective: made up of Brown Girls from all over the world, held together by their shared experiences of being “new” and “other” and “the only hope”, under-represented and invisible to those most privileged.

There is so much here, and I am sure so much more to come from Ms. Andreades. Can’t wait.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the eARC.

This is a gorgeous, lyrical evocation of a place and the experiences of those that call it home. I loved every word!