Brown Girls

A blazingly original debut novel about a group of friends and their immigrant families from Queens, New York--a tenderly observed, fiercely poetic love letter to a modern generation of brown girls.

"An acute study of those tender moments of becoming, this is an ode to girlhood, inheritance, and the good trouble the body yields."--Raven Leilani, author of Luster

If you really want to know, we are the color of 7-Eleven root beer. The color of sand at Rockaway Beach when it blisters the bottoms of our feet. Color of soil . . .

Welcome to Queens, New York, where streets echo with languages from all over the globe, subways rumble above dollar stores, trees bloom and topple over sidewalks, and the funky scent of the Atlantic Ocean wafts in from Rockaway Beach. Within one of New York City's most vibrant and eclectic boroughs, young women of color like Nadira, Gabby, Naz, Trish, Angelique, and countless others, attempt to reconcile their immigrant backgrounds with the American culture in which they come of age. Here, they become friends for life--or so they vow.

Exuberant and wild, together they roam The City That Never Sleeps, sing Mariah Carey at the tops of their lungs, yearn for crushes who pay them no mind--and break the hearts of those who do--all while trying to heed their mothers' commands to be obedient daughters. But as they age, their paths diverge and rifts form between them, as some choose to remain on familiar streets, while others find themselves ascending in the world, beckoned by existences foreign and seemingly at odds with their humble roots.

A blazingly original debut novel told by a chorus of unforgettable voices, Brown Girls illustrates a collective portrait of childhood, adulthood, and beyond, and is a striking exploration of female friendship, a powerful depiction of women of color attempting to forge their place in the world today. For even as the conflicting desires of ambition and loyalty, freedom and commitment, adventure and stability risk dividing them, it is to one another--and to Queens--that the girls ultimately return.

Daphne Palasi Andreades was born and raised in Queens, New York. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she was awarded a Henfield Prize and a Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. She is the recipient of a 2021 O. Henry Prize, as well as scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, where she won the Voices of Color Prize, and other honors. Brown Girls is her first novel.

• Publisher: Random House (January 4, 2022)
• Language: English
• Hardcover: 224 pages
• ISBN-10: 0593243420
• ISBN-13: 9780593243428
• Item Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.9 x 7.78 inches