Novel
Brown Girl, Brownstones
Paule Marshall · 1959
Synopsis
In Brooklyn, ten-year-old Selina Boyce lives with her parents, immigrants from Barbados, and her sister Ina in a brownstone house that the family rents. Her mother, Silla, stern and stubborn, saves to buy the house; her father, Deighton, a dreamer and impulsive, thinks of going back home. When he inherits a piece of land, the couple is torn apart: should it be sold to pay for the house or kept for the father's plans? Selina grows up between them, in poverty and racism.
Context
Published in New York in 1959 by Random House, this first novel, partly autobiographical, was praised by the New York Times Book Review for its vivid characters and the cadence of its dialogue. Its reissue in 1981 by the Feminist Press won it a new readership, and Cheryl Wall, in the 2014 Norton Anthology of African American Literature, sees in it the beginning of contemporary writing by African American women. CBS television gave an adaptation of it in 1960.
Who it is for
For reading a coming-of-age novel about the Barbadian community of Brooklyn, between attachment to the island and the American dream.
Prizes and reception
The New York Herald Tribune spoke of an unforgettable novel, written with pride and anger, with rebellion and tears.
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