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Brown White Black
An American Family at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion
Nishta J. Mehra(0)
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Intimate and honest essays on motherhood, marriage, love, and acceptance
Brown White Black is a portrait of Nishta J. Mehra's family: her wife, who is white; her adopted child, Shiv, who is black; and their experiences dealing with America's rigid ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. Her clear-eyed and incisive writing on her family's daily struggle to make space for themselves amid racial intolerance and stereotypes personalizes some of America's most fraught issues. Mehra writes candidly about her efforts to protect and shelter Shiv from racial slurs on the playground and from intrusive questions by strangers while educating her child on the realities and dangers of being black in America. In other essays, she discusses growing up in the racially polarized city of Memphis; coming out as queer; being an adoptive mother who is brown; and what it's like to be constantly confronted by people's confusion, concern, and expectations about her child and her family. Above all, Mehra argues passionately for a more nuanced and compassionate understanding of identity and family.
Both poignant and challenging, Brown White Black is a remarkable portrait of a loving family on the front lines of some of the most highly charged conversations in our culture.
Brown White Black is a portrait of Nishta J. Mehra's family: her wife, who is white; her adopted child, Shiv, who is black; and their experiences dealing with America's rigid ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. Her clear-eyed and incisive writing on her family's daily struggle to make space for themselves amid racial intolerance and stereotypes personalizes some of America's most fraught issues. Mehra writes candidly about her efforts to protect and shelter Shiv from racial slurs on the playground and from intrusive questions by strangers while educating her child on the realities and dangers of being black in America. In other essays, she discusses growing up in the racially polarized city of Memphis; coming out as queer; being an adoptive mother who is brown; and what it's like to be constantly confronted by people's confusion, concern, and expectations about her child and her family. Above all, Mehra argues passionately for a more nuanced and compassionate understanding of identity and family.
Both poignant and challenging, Brown White Black is a remarkable portrait of a loving family on the front lines of some of the most highly charged conversations in our culture.
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Reviews
"This fantastic memoir is such a welcome change from the glut of motherhood narratives that have been overwhelming bookshelves lately. . . .The honesty and clarity with which Mehra lays out how the family traverses and makes decisions around race, gender, and social structures is so refreshing to read, even if you have no interest in parenthood yourself. Mehra and her wife are somehow able to be b
BuzzFeed
"A stirring portrait...Touching on issues of race, gender, sexuality, parenthood, marriage, and love, [Brown White Black is] a timely book of essays that challenges readers to examine their own understanding of identity and family."
Bustle
"For marginalized people, widening the understanding of identity is a path to freedom. ...These essays mine deep and distinct emotional terrain. Mehra delves unflinchingly into each of her identities and their sharp intersections. In this collection Mehra is unafraid to struggle for her own liberty. Readers may finish these pages a bit freer themselves."
Camille Acker, The New York Times Book Review