Brown Girl, Brownstones - (Penguin Vitae) by Paule Marshall (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A collectible hardcover edition of 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

A Penguin Vitae Edition

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 beautiful new edition of her debut novel, she finally takes her rightful place in the American literary canon.

Penguin Vitae--loosely translated as "Penguin of one's life"--is a deluxe hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

Review Quotes

"Remarkable for its colorful characters, the cadence of its dialogue and its evocation of a still-lingering past." --The New York Times Book Review

"Marshall brings to her characters . . . an instinctive understanding, a generosity and free humor that combine to form a style remarkable for its courage, its color, and its natural control." --The New Yorker

"An unforgettable novel written with pride and anger, with rebellion and tears." --New York Herald Tribune

"Passionate, compelling . . . an impressive accomplishment." --Saturday Review

"[A] literary gem . . . Brown Girl, Brownstones is so affirming in its celebration of Caribbean culture that, reading it, I felt my lungs fill with my desire to create. . . . How many Black Caribbean girls, I wondered, had any idea that we could do this, that we could tell our own stories? . . . Paule Marshall brought Black Caribbean women to life in her books. . . . She did this with compassion and precision, masterfully capturing all the nuances of being Black, Caribbean, immigrant, woman. She did this, above all, with love. . . . In depicting a young girl carving out a place for herself in the world, Paule Marshall has carved out a place for herself in the literary canon." --Nicole Dennis-Benn, from the Foreword

About the Author

Paule Marshall (1929-2019) was a MacArthur "genius," a Guggenheim fellow, and the recipient of numerous other honors, including the American Book Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, and the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award. A member of "the Sisterhood" of Black women writers that included Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Alice Walker, she published five novels--Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959); The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (1969); Praisesong for the Widow (1983); Daughters (1991); and The Fisher King (2001)--as well as a collection of novellas, Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961); a short-story collection, Reena and Other Stories (1983); and a memoir, Triangular Road (2009). Born and raised in Brooklyn to parents from Barbados, she died in Richmond, Virginia.

Nicole Dennis-Benn (foreword) is the author of the Read with Jenna Book Club pick Patsy, which was a national bestseller and a Lambda Literary Award winner, and Here Comes the Sun, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Lambda Literary Award winner. Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, she teaches at Princeton and lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York.