Well, one might ask, how goes the reading-Brooklyn-novels project?
I've been taken by surprise. Solely by the luck of the draw, just because the books were available at the public library, and without planning or intention on my part, my first three novels all had the same focus: coming-of-age-as-a-girl-in-Brooklyn. First, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (TGB) about a Irish-German girl in the period around WWI, then Another Brooklyn (AB) about a Black or African-American girl in 1970s Bushwick, and yesterday, Brown Girl, Brownstones (BG,B) by Paule Marshall, written in 1959 but neglected and then rediscovered during the 1970s. BG,B focuses on young Selina Boyce, daughter of immigrants from Barbados, who was raised in a West Indian neighborhood somewhere between Fulton Avenue and Crown Heights.
The three novels, and their three heroines, share common concerns. In all three, an intelligent young girl, a reader, tries to achieve selfhood in a challenging environment. The young girls come from families that are led by strong mothers and are compromised by weak, failing fathers. Religions (Catholicism in TGB, Nation of Islam in AB, and a dictatorial new religion led by "Father Peace," whom I take to be Father Divine, in BG,B) are unhelpful and damaging.
Today's novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones is the most detailed, informative, and moving of the trio. It's a substantial, rich, highly-detailed, and I would say old-fashioned novel about self-discovery. It used to be said that "every modern writer's first novel should be titled "my horrible adolescence.'" But BG,B is more complicated than the stereotype. It's an "immigration novel" about the conflicts between the foreign-born parents and the Brooklyn-born daughter. It's also a story of regional interest, very strong in depicting the peculiarities of Brooklyn culture.
Barbadian-Americans are depicted as an entrepreneurial class, upwardly mobile, anxious to get ahead. The first step is to acquire a brownstone and become a landlord rather than a tenant. And yet young Selina rejects her aspiring mother, whom she sees as hopelessly materialistic. She fears the success of a move to the boring suburbs -- a familiar 1950s theme.
BG,B is a novel about race, and, in my opinion, hits its stride in the last few chapters when Paule Marshall analyzes bigotry. There are a few pages that either anticipate or follow the powerful critiques of James Baldwin and Frantz Fanon. And Richard Wright. I suspect that it's such pages that helped bring deserved attention to Brown Girl, Brownstones.
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