Brown Girl, Brownstones

By: Paule Marshall

Narrated by: Jody Lebel

Brown Girl, Brownstones tells the story of a young Barbadian American caught between the ambitious dreams of her forward-looking mother and the rose-tinted nostalgia of her father. While Selina's mother strives diligently to save enough money to buy a brownstone in Brooklyn, her father dreams only of returning to his home in Barbados. Managing a constellation of difficult family and cultural dynamics, Selina is also faced with navigating the complex maze of immigrant identity in America and bearing the burdens of racism and poverty.

Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and WWII, the close-knit community of immigrants from Barbados where Selina grows up is drawn from the author's own experience as a young girl in Brooklyn. This novel, first published in 1959, was one of the first to probe the difficult cross-cultural conflicts and identities so integral to the experiences of America's innumerable immigrant communities. A vibrant and compelling tale of self-discovery, Brown Girl, Brownstones is a striking and honest novel about a too-often overlooked American experience.

©1959 Paule Marshall (P)2022 Licensing Management, Inc.

interesting story, once get past the narration

Overall I liked this story. However the narrator did a horrible Bajan accent. With such a wordy story that starts off slow, it's hard to overlook. Not to mention the focus of the story is Bajan culture so you have to do a decent accent. The story gets interesting about half way through. Glad I stuck with it. Although I had to increase the narration speed.

finally!

been waiting for this audio book, luckily the words are still descriptive and resonant despite the poor reading.

Decent novel, bad narrator

Novel could have used some editing, some scenes are way too long. But overall an interesting story. The narrator’s tone and attempt at accents is subpar.

Terrible!

And this book was recommended to me from another incredible book but unfortunately the story doesn’t make sense, it’s stereotypical and poorly written. I feel sorry for the narrator that had to read this. Horrible accent but maybe she was reading like the way it was written. Beware. I could not even finish.

Narrator Ruins It

I couldn’t listen to this audiobook because the narrator ruins it by giving the characters southern twang accents. I’ve always been able to get past narrators voicings of characters, but perhaps the timing was just off for me. I’ve also been reading Cicely Tyson’s Just As I Am which brought me to this book in the first place, and it just highlights how completely wrong the accents in this book are. I’ll have to read it instead.