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Narrated by Nishta J. Mehra
Nishta J. MehraUnabridged — 6 hours, 20 minutes
Narrated by Nishta J. Mehra
Nishta J. MehraUnabridged — 6 hours, 20 minutes
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Intimate and honest essays on motherhood, marriage, love, and acceptance.
Brown White Black is a portrait of Nishta J. Mehra's family: her wife, who is white; her adopted child, Shiv, who is black; and their experiences dealing with America's rigid ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. Her clear-eyed and incisive writing on her family's daily struggle to make space for themselves amid racial intolerance and stereotypes personalizes some of America's most fraught issues. Mehra writes candidly about her efforts to protect and shelter her child from racial slurs on the playground and from intrusive questions by strangers while educating Shiv on the realities and dangers of being black in America. In other essays, she discusses her childhood living in the racially polarized city of Memphis; coming out as queer; being an adoptive mother who is brown; and what it's like to be constantly confronted by people's confusion, concern, and expectations about her child and her family. Above all, Mehra argues passionately for a more nuanced and compassionate understanding of identity and family.
Both poignant and challenging, Brown White Black is a remarkable portrait of a loving family on the front lines of some of the most highly charged conversations in our culture.
"Brown White Black is a beautiful memoir about the blending of a family, filled with different cultures and backgrounds, defying social norms and expectations about what a “normal” family should be." -- BookRiot
Mehra's prose is clear and heartfelt whether she's writing as daughter, queer, wife, mother or teacher. "Freedom is a constant struggle," Angela Davis has said, and in this collection Mehra is unafraid to struggle for her own liberty. Readers may finish these pages a bit freer themselves.
★ 12/24/2018
Mehra, a teacher, reflects on her experience as a lesbian daughter of Indian immigrants with an interracial family in this thoughtful memoir-in-essays. Mehra’s parents emigrated from India and raised her in “upper-class Memphis.” Weaned on Madonna and Murphy Brown, Mehra wryly describes navigating adolescence as “a brown girl in a white world”: “could I dress up as Cher from Clueless, or would everyone automatically assume I should go as Dionne, who was black?” As a 19-year-old college student, she fell in love with Jill, her professor; about a decade later, the couple adopted a black child at birth. Mehra brings that now-5-year-old child, Shiv, to vivid life in affectionately rendered details—Shiv’s insistence on saying pre-dinner grace (often reminding both forgetful parents), the colorful outfits, the poop jokes, the moments of admitted longing for birth parents. Mehra also documents careful thought processes and interrogates her own assumptions and knee-jerk impulses around parenting, social interactions, and self-presentation. She looks at experience in a measured, nuanced way, empathizing with both marginalized people and the dismayed parents of gay kids who have just come out, and notably with her father, who wanted her to have long hair and marry a man. This insightful, searching book will appeal to anyone contemplating race, family, or growing into oneself. (Feb.)
This fantastic memoir is such a welcome change from the glut of motherhood narratives that have been overwhelming bookshelves lately. . . .The honesty and clarity with which Mehra lays out how the family traverses and makes decisions around race, gender, and social structures is so refreshing to read, even if you have no interest in parenthood yourself. Mehra and her wife are somehow able to be both pragmatic and idealistic about raising their gender-nonconforming black child as a mixed-race lesbian couple in America.” —BuzzFeed
"For marginalized people, widening the understanding of identity is a path to freedom. ...These essays mine deep and distinct emotional terrain. Mehra delves unflinchingly into each of her identities and their sharp intersections. In this collection Mehra is unafraid to struggle for her own liberty. Readers may finish these pages a bit freer themselves." —Camille Acker, The New York Times Book Review
"A stirring portrait...Touching on issues of race, gender, sexuality, parenthood, marriage, and love, [Brown White Black is] a timely book of essays that challenges readers to examine their own understanding of identity and family." —Bustle
"Mehra, a teacher, reflects on her experience as a lesbian daughter of Indian immigrants with an interracial family in this thoughtful memoir-in-essays...This insightful, searching book will appeal to anyone contemplating race, family, or growing into oneself." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Mehra’s nuanced and thought-provoking work resonates on multiple levels— from the immigrant experience and race relations to accepting one’s sexuality, adoption, parenthood, and more. Excellent for readers interested in family and issues of identity in America.” —Library Journal (starred review)
"Mehra makes a strong statement about the importance of moving beyond gender and racial barriers toward a more inclusive view of family life. Full of a wide range of insight and emotion, these essays effectively show the difficulties of being a mixed-race, same-sex family in America." —Kirkus Reviews
"An insightful, moving look at what it’s like to navigate a world that doesn’t always understand you." —BookRiot
In this audiobook, there is a disconnect between what author Nishta J. Mehra writes and how she conveys it in her narration. Mehra shares how she navigated the challenges of being an Indian-American growing up in the South, coming out to her family, and adopting an African-American baby with her wife. Her narration is decent but can sound flat—as if she is saying the words but not vocally embracing them. On occasion, listeners will catch snippets of what sounds like a smile or anguish in her narration, but they prove the exception. Her delivery doesn’t enhance the story of her fascinating life and the insights she gleaned in grappling with the challenges of cultural prejudice. L.E. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
2018-10-15
Two women, an adopted black son, and the prejudices and fears they endure as a family.
Mehra (The Pomegranate King, 2013) is "the first-generation daughter of Indian immigrants." She's also a lesbian married to a white woman, and they have adopted a black son. In this candid and sometimes angry, bitter series of essays, the author explores how difficult it can be to be anything but white in America. "Our family doesn't fit well into boxes," she writes. "We don't fit at all." From an early age, she writes, she felt different than her peers because her skin was brown, she sometimes wore different clothes, and the food she ate at home was unlike what the other children ate. At times, she embraced her Indian heritage, but occasionally, she was ashamed of it, which was especially stressful for her father, who died when Mehra was in her 20s. The author is annoyed at the appropriation by non-Indians of symbols that have importance to the Hindu faith. She discusses the tension and anxiety surrounding her coming out as a lesbian, and she shares her fears for her black son. "Becoming the parent of a black son," writes Mehra, "has given me the perspective to see that there is a real reluctance to engage in a conversation about the Asian American community's participation in anti-black racism. Related to this is a tendency to accommodate and apologize; I learned early on that white people are bad at being uncomfortable." The essays feature a mostly smooth, engaging mix of pride, passion, frustration, and anger. Numerous times Mehra has been unnecessarily questioned about her life. With this book, she makes a strong statement about the importance of moving beyond gender and racial barriers toward a more inclusive view of family life.
Full of a wide range of insights and emotions, these essays effectively show the difficulties of being a mixed-race, same-sex family in America.
| BN ID: | 2940172068942 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Macmillan Audio |
| Publication date: | 02/05/2019 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
