Brown Girl, Brownstones

Published in 1959, Brown Girl, Brownstones is American novelist Paule Marshall’s debut novel. Loosely based on the early events of Marshall’s life, the story explores Selina Boyce’s coming of age. Selina is the daughter of Deighton and Silla Boyce, Barbadian immigrants living in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s.

Marshall structures the historical fiction narrative in four parts. In the first, 10-year-old Selina plays in the Brooklyn brownstone where her family lives and listens to her father’s fantasies about building a house back in Barbados. Deighton receives a letter informing him that he has inherited two acres in his native country. When his wife, Silla, hears the news, she wants him to sell the land and use the proceeds to buy the brownstone. Deighton wants to keep the land.

In Book 2, Selina escapes the arguments between her parents by going to the park with Beryl Challenor, her best friend. Meanwhile, Silla, still intent on buying a home, grows increasingly angry as her friends discuss who owns a house, and who does not. One tells her about how spoiled Deighton was growing up.