Brown Girl, Brownstones is a novel that focuses on the experiences of Selina Boyce as she navigates her way into maturity in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn. As the title of the book would imply, Selina lives in a brownstone along with her older sister Ida, her mother Silla; who is an ardent supporter of the concept of the American dream and is determined and indeed has been determined to make that dream happened ever since she begged her mother to allow her to go to America to work and send remittences back home, and her father Deighton who doesn’t share his wife’s work ethic and puts a strain on their marriage with his inability to remain in one trade. Initially he is portrayed sympathetically and is shown to be working towards achieving gainful employment in the field of Accounting, this sympathy is quickly yanked away as it comes to light that he has been sleeping with an older woman.
The first two books outline the major conflict that will be present in the rest of the book. It’s obvious that there is major tension present in the Boyce household, the mother and father are shown to hold different ideologies and because of this Selina is forced into an awkward position between the two. Selina has a rather romantic perception of both the upper crust of American society (where she would like to one day find herself, no matter how impossible that may be) and Barbados from which her family is from. Silla has absolutely no desire to return to the West Indies as all she remembers is a life of backbreaking work. Deighton, however, after learning that he has inherited an amount of land there immediately starts planning out the house he’s going to build there. This seems like a very significant point on account of the common lens through which we see immigrants from the West Indies. We conceptualize them as being inherently hard working but as Deighton shows some of them can be lazy and shiftless just like the rest of us.
Moving on to the article “Capital of The Caribbean”, as author Jason Parker explains, Harlem during the period of Caribbean immigration was an incredibly important hotbed of political agitation for social change both domestically and abroad. Prior to World War II the community in Harlem was fragmented along ethnic lines. The Italian invasion of Ethiopia was the catalyst for a greater Pan-African movement. In a way it fomented a sense of solidarity between all those who were having their lives dictated for them by the imperial governments put in place by Europe, even though Italy didn’t stick around long enough to set up such a government. When America threatened to establish themselves in the area a la Great Britain members of the UNIA and other pro-black organizations began to agitate for their right to self-determination. Much of this pressure came from neighborhoods like Harlem and is partially responsible for Roosevelt’s softened attitude towards the Caribbean. Without Harlem’s influence who knows what the United States would have done in the West Indies.
