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A review by mythilisk
Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades
3.0
As a Certified Brown Girl From Queens (TM) I wish for a lot of things:
- That the author knew how much it pleases me to see this out in the world, called what it is
- That I didn't read this as a novel and instead did so as a long poem. I don't think my rating would change but at least I'd feel less like this was incomplete and needed a better editor.
-That the top review for this book that came up was a well-thought out one...from someone who does not seem to be brown or from New York. There is a special thing about Queens that was captured here, but it was very much in a way that was neither an inside joke/nostalgia nor a thorough explanation for outsiders.
- That I loved this as much as I had wanted to - I did like it thougb. The author is Filipina and is trying to speak for the most diverse place in the entire world. That in and of itself could be done well but not in the surface-level way it was here. I read the NYT blurb it came with on the Libby app and I thought I was listening to an entirely different book, one that was too...basic or generic, for lack of a better word. Perhaps it was just edited into the current state to be 'palatable' the way restaurant Indian food is spiced down for white folks
- That it's nowhere near the end of stories about and from Brown Girls From Queens
- That the author knew how much it pleases me to see this out in the world, called what it is
- That I didn't read this as a novel and instead did so as a long poem. I don't think my rating would change but at least I'd feel less like this was incomplete and needed a better editor.
-That the top review for this book that came up was a well-thought out one...from someone who does not seem to be brown or from New York. There is a special thing about Queens that was captured here, but it was very much in a way that was neither an inside joke/nostalgia nor a thorough explanation for outsiders.
- That I loved this as much as I had wanted to - I did like it thougb. The author is Filipina and is trying to speak for the most diverse place in the entire world. That in and of itself could be done well but not in the surface-level way it was here. I read the NYT blurb it came with on the Libby app and I thought I was listening to an entirely different book, one that was too...basic or generic, for lack of a better word. Perhaps it was just edited into the current state to be 'palatable' the way restaurant Indian food is spiced down for white folks
- That it's nowhere near the end of stories about and from Brown Girls From Queens