Solidarity and Kinship: Daphne Palasi Andreades Interviewed
A choral coming-of-age novel.
JANUARY 25, 2022
In Brown Girls (Random House), the debut novel by Daphne Palasi Andreades, a group of girls in Queens, New York, grow up together on the page. The girls lie “starfish-like and still, atop sun-warmed concrete in backyards”; they sneak out for secret dates; and they sneak out for secret meetings with their friends at Dunkin' Donuts, worrying about the judgment of their families and their futures. They then walk each other home until they “come to the block where our routes split.” Their routes will further split, though they continue to narrate as one entity, a "we," as they pursue many different careers, as they meet their partners, as they have children or choose not to, and as they eventually face their own mortality. Andreades's language is gorgeous and lyrical, but it is also funny and irreverent, as when the girls ride rented bikes across the “fart-smelling” East River. The effect is joyous, imbuing a multiplicity of experiences into a unified “we” that feels incredibly fresh and alive, both universal and specific.