rown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall

The following notes are largely my observations from the book "Brown Girl, Brownstones" by Paule Marshall. I managed to skip lecture both days we discussed it in class!

Written in several books, and spanning several years, "Brown Girl, Brownstone" is a bildungsroman, a novel about the creation of a person's identity, in this case, young Selina Boyce is followed from the time she's about 10 until her early twenties. The novel is written in a third person omniscient style, that allows for glimpses inside the minds of all the various characters.

The Boyce family is originally from Barbados, headed by Selina's stern and unforgiving mother, Silla, while her frivolous father, Deighton, chases tail and dreams of making it big. Selina also has an older sister, Ina.

The story opens with the family leasing a brownstone that once contained a white family. Through the images of the furniture and Selina's imagination we quickly realize that Selina idealizes the family that lived in her house before her, this is perhaps a reflection of her desire to belong, rather than her feelings of disconnection to the country she's living in.

Also at the start of the novel, Silla is working as a housekeeper for a wealthy Jewish family. The theme of interracial relationships is major in the novel, as some Caribbean immigrants believe that they are oppressed by their race, while Silla holds the view that any group of people in power will do everything they can to stay in power, and that the way to attain power is through diligence and hard work. Sillascraps, schemes and saves until she can own property of her own in New York, as she sees land ownership as the only way to get ahead.

In that sense, Silla seems to embody the American dream. She's calculating, ambitious, independent, strong and determined to provide a better future for her daughters. Her greatest dream for Selina is that she become a doctor, this sentiment of success through education and hard work is echoed in the predominant culture of the US as well as in other books dealing with Caribbean immigrants, likeDanticat's "Breath, Eyes, Memory." Interestingly, Danticat writes a great forward for "Brown Girl, Brownstones."

Silla's strong presence scares Ina into a state of perpetualwithdrawal. As the book progresses, Ina's character seems to shrink into the background. Because of her serious and stern nature, Selina looks to her father for love. Deighton loves his daughter perhaps because she does not question him, at least not at first. He wants to be a big man above all else, and routinely studies variouscorrespondence courses in hopes of landing a job that pays big money. He seems oddly inclined to perpetuate his own injuries, though, as he repeatedly sets him self up to be the victim of racism. For example, Deighton spends months studying accounting, and is warned by his wife, his friends and neighbors that the big accounting firms downtown (which are run by racist, narrow-minded white people) won't hire him because he's not white. When he goes down to apply for work and is rudely turned away, he immediately recalls looking for work back in Barbados as a store clerk, where the snobby white people working in the store turned him away rudely.

Deighton's plans are all essentially get-rich-quick schemes, and he is more interested in dreaming about their outcomes than actually working towards making his dreams come true. This infuriates practical, single-minded Silla, who has to do nothing but work to make up for the fact that her husband is little more than a good time boy. The incident with the trumpet details precisely how uselessDeighton is as a provider; Selina though does not see this until way later.

There are a large number of minor characters in the novel which would make anyone attempting to adapt it into a screenplay absolutely nuts. What I mean by that is that most of them are non-essential to the plot but take up enough time and space to make you really question their importance or lack of importance to the overall storyline.

Some of them, like Seifert Yearwood, Miss Thompson and Beryl's family, seem to exist to show the reader what life is like for those who adhere to the standards of the hard-working, careful planning and properly assimilating Bajan-American. Others, like Suggie, are obvious misfits who show the dissenting side of all that; while the majority of the whites who exist seem to serve only to remind Selina that she's not like them. Even her school friend, Rachel, fetishizesSelina's differences to an extent. All in all, these characters feel superfluous to the plot, but they take up enough pages to easy coax an eight page paper out of, if a student were so inclined. As she grows older, Selina becomes more and more like Silla, she's as smart as her mother and as driven to achieve her goals. In an act of developed rebellion, Selina at first refuses to join the Association that her mother and so many of her friends have become a part of. When she does decide to join, it's purely to win some prize money intended as a scholarship. Rather than attend school with the money, Selina wants to run off with Clive; this act of defiance is intended as Selina's big F you to the community but in the end she allows it to fall apart. Though she doesn't end up taking the money, she does effectively destroy her relationship with her mother by admitting she intended to do it.