Identity

Over the course of the novel, the author traces the brown girls coming of age in order to explore the ways in which childhood impacts the individual's identity. The first person plural narration is essential to understanding these explorations. Instead of writing the novel from the first person singular point of view of one brown girl, the author uses the first person plural narrative voice in order to encompass the experiences of a network of brown, immigrant girls living in "the dregs of Queens, New York" (3). The Queens setting contributes significantly to the girls' understanding of self. Indeed, the novel's opening chapter, "Brown Girls," begins with descriptions of the girls’ childhood neighborhood, incorporating images of their family members as well. Although the girls come from varying ethnic and racial backgrounds, they share a common relationship to their hometown and the immigrant parents who raise them.

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