August 1, 2021
Speaking as a choral "we," Andreades's "brown girls"--among them Nadira, Gabby, Naz, Trish, and Angelique--grow up together in Queens, New York, wrestling with their immigrant roots, their parents' rules, their aspirations (regarding both careers and boys), and their desire to fit into American culture. Will they always be friends, loyal to the end, as they swear? Excerpts from this debut novel have claimed O. Henry and Kenyon Review Short Fiction honors.
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October 18, 2021
Andreades’s underwhelming debut follows a group of young women of color who grow up in the “dregs of Queens.” Narrated using the first-person plural “we,” the story follows the trajectories of girls who, by age 10, have learned to never talk back, stay quiet in the face of bullying, and accept that the outside world is oblivious to their different shades of brown (more than a dozen of their names are first heard in reference to the teachers’ confusion over who is who: “They call us Khadija, Akanksha, Maribeth, Ximena, Breonna, Cherelle, Thanh, Yoon, Ellen”). At 13, they secretly crush on brown boys (considered “trouble” in their parents’ eyes) and experiment with makeup to make their skin lighter. At 15, they part ways, as some start high school outside of Queens, while others stay near home. At 18, a rift forms as they leave for different colleges and realize that in their home neighborhoods, they must downplay their intelligence and keep their ambitions to themselves. Still, they try to stay in touch as they navigate predominantly white spaces. The prose is often simplistic, and there is little character complexity beyond the women’s contrasting paths. Unfortunately, the first-person-plural narration robs the work of nuance and oversimplifies complex ideas about race and identity. Agent: Jin Auh, the Wylie Agency.
November 1, 2021
Set in Queens, New York, this debut novel from a first-generation Filipino American presents a string of vignettes depicting the coming of age of first-generation immigrant Millennial girls. There is a musicality in the prose that evokes a kind of Greek chorus as Andreades uses the collective pronoun "we" to portray ardent girls whose skin color is not white. Told in seven parts that correspond to various life stages of girls and women from age nine until death, it's an immersive exercise steeped in 1990s references and awash in the characters' yearnings and preoccupations. The girls talk about their clashes with ethnic traditions and family expectations, their unbridled ambitions and desires, and their belief that despite living in an alleged realm of opportunities, they see themselves as outsiders. Andreades evokes a mixed bag of frustrations and irony as the girls navigate their lives in the "dregs of Queens," absorbed in themselves and pointing out stereotypes directed at them. These brown girls teeter between awe and contempt of their heritage in experiences that illuminate a central aspect of American life.
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Starred review from November 1, 2021
DEBUT In a poor, ethnically mixed neighborhood in "the dregs of Queens"--bisected by the "Boulevard of Death," which one must cross to access schools, playgrounds, and libraries--brown girls hang together, sing and dance, and defend one another when necessary. At school, teachers can't tell them apart; at the mall, they are watched with suspicion; at home, they often share space with recent immigrants who may or may not be family. Eventually, they reach puberty, crush on boys, and discover the social and economic differences between white and brown. Their paths diverge in high school, and they see each other less. Some go to college, others get jobs, and the divide widens as they settle into their careers. They find themselves in the company of white people more often and sometimes date or marry white people, but at parties and company events they are often mistaken for "the help." Some have children and try to prepare the next generation for something beyond what they knew. Some are able to travel to "the motherland," seeking themselves and coming back wiser and more confident. In trouble, they always return to their brown friends. The eponymous brown girls of Andreades's debut novel are all the girls in the world who are not white, and the author uses the collective "we" to tell the tale as a group experience. VERDICT Highly recommended.--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
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Starred review from April 1, 2022
A masterfully executed ode to brown girls on their journeys of becoming. Andreades' debut novel is a unique coming-of-age story screamed, sung, howled, hummed by "we," a first-person plural narrator representing a group of friends from Queens, New York, on the cusp of womanhood. Writing in vignettes, with language that is as punchy as it is lyrical and impassioned, Andreades explores intersectional issues of womanhood, race, and class. Her chorus asks what it means to embody both the colonized and the colonizer: as American children of immigrant parents who speak English better than their mother tongue. As students at Columbia University who worry about undocumented family back in Queens. As people who realize that home will always mean two places at once. Andreades skillfully navigates multiple literary and political challenges. The novel successfully argues for a specifically American identity politics that eschews nationality or geographic region for a common experience of marginalization. The brown girls have roots in such diverse places as Ghana, India, and Mexico yet can believably speak as one chorus. To pull off a novel with basically no individual characters or character development that conveys an intimate story of becoming--a bildungsroman--is no easy feat. This book is (unbelievably!) a page-turner; Andreades accomplishes this with the energy and joyful beauty of her prose, which keeps the book moving at a reckless pace. Andreades' brown girls speak with one voice without being reductionist. She pays homage to the brown girls who have left Queens and those who have stayed, straight and gay, teen murder victim and thriving career woman, parent and intentionally childless: The list goes on and on. Singing as one, Andreades' brown girls create and capture the voice of a generation.
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