Almost Brown Audiobook Libro.fm

An awardwinning writer retraces her dysfunctional biracial globetrotting familys journey as she reckons with ethnicity and belonging diversity and race and the complexities of life within a multicultural household

Almost Brownis that rarest of things a memoir that is both deeply intimate and intellectually ambitiousSusan Orlean author ofThe Library Book

Charlotte Gills father is Indian Her mother is English They meet in 1960s London when the world is not quite ready for interracial love Their union results in a total meltdown of familial relations a lot of immigration paperwork and three children all in varying shades of tan Together they set off on a journey from the United Kingdom to Canadato the United States in an elusive pursuit of life liberty and happinessa dream that eventually tears them apart

Almost Brown is an exploration of diasporic intermingling involving two eccentric parents from worlds apart and their halfbrown children as they experience the paradoxes and conundrums of life as its lived between race checkboxes Their intercultural experiment features turbans and tube socks chana masala and Cherry Coke Over time Gillsparents drift apart because they just arent compatible But asshe too finds herself distancing from her fatherWhy is she embarrassed to walk down the street with him and not her momshe doesnt know if its because of his personality or his race Is this her own unconscious biasfavoring one parent over the other in the racialtugofwarthat plagues our society Almost Brown looks for answers to questions shared by many mixedrace people What am I What does it mean to be a person of color when the concept is a societal invention and really only applies halfway if you are half white Eventually after years of silence Gill and her father reclaim a space for forgiveness and love

In a funny turbulent and ultimately heartwarming storyGillexamines the brilliant messiness of ancestry diversity and the idea of racea historical concept that still informs our beliefs about ethnicity today