I think that “Brown Girl Brownstones” speaks a powerful message about life as a Caribbean immigrant in New York. It seems as if Selina and her family will never be able to get away from the shadow of the white families who used to live in their neighborhood as can be seen by Selina’s incessant day dreams of joining the white family who used to live in her house before her. Unlike the rest of her family, she doesn’t seem to have any close ties to her home country in Barbados and instead would rather trade in her current life for the luxury of an upperclass New Yorker family. This all seems kind of strange to me because I’m very proud of my heritage and could never imagine trading the life I have now for any other. I wasn’t even born in Peru but because of the way i was raised, I’ve always felt a strong connection to my heritage. Granted, the food is delicious and that goes a long way towards my love for my country, but either way, I like being different. I wouldn’t want to be like some of the other people who have no connection to their heritages so that’s why this whole idea of Selina shaking off her heritage to be like the rest of the “normal” Americans seems so strange to me. To be fair to Selina, its quite evident that she is still very innocent. Like when she was curiously interested about her older sister’s menstrual cramps. Another predominant theme presented in the novel is the race relations between the Caribbean immigrants and the hegemony of white Americans. Selena’s mother, Silla, is a housemaid for a wealthy jewish family and she has an interesting perspective on the race relationships. In her eyes, she sees that the hegemony that is currently in power will do whatever it takes to stay in power. Silla feels that her family and other black are being oppressed by this hegemony and that the only way for them to secure power of their own is through hard work. Her dream is actually for Selena to become a big time successful doctor in America. She feels that this is one of the best ways for Caribbeans, and blacks in general, to gain some power in American society. This whole race relationship is further exemplified when Deighton, Selena’s father, applies for a job as an accountant at a predominately white firm. Despite everything his friends and family tell him, Deighton invests months of work into studying accounting only to be rejected by the firm due to his race. It seems that he actually wanted to subject himself to racism. Everyone told him that it wasn’t a good idea but he was to stubborn to listen and ultimately failed. Its possible that he just wanted other people to pity him so he wouldn’t feel as guilty for some of the bad things that he’s done in his life. Overall, I found this section of reading intriguing and am actually curious to find out how the rest of the story will develop and whether or not Selena will develop the connection to her heritage that I myself hold so dearly.