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About Brown Girl, Brownstones

The beloved coming-of-age novel about a Brooklyn girlhood that heralded a renaissance in Black women’s literature more than sixty years ago, with a new foreword by Nicole Dennis-Benn, the bestselling author of Patsy and Here Comes the Sun Selina Boyce comes of age in 1940s Brooklyn as the daughter of two Barbadian immigrants—a father she adores and who dreams of nothing but his return to his homeland, and a mother she admires and who is determined to purchase their New York City brownstone. When her father comes into an unexpected inheritance, her parents’ opposing desires set in motion the family’s collapse and Selina’s own self-realization amid the warring ideals and identities of her Black Caribbean community. With Brown Girl, Brownstones , Paule Marshall pioneered a revolution in Black women’s writing, paving the way for Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, and June Jordan in the 1970s. With this new edition of her debut novel, she finally takes her rightful place in the American literary canon.