This image is the cover for the book Brown Girl

Brown Girl

Shelly Nacre is the brown face in a sea of white, washed up on the rocky shores of Long Island. Life changes suddenly when tragedy befalls her family, leaving Shelly to make sense of what has happened in the only way she knows how. Her father, an armchair activist, feeds her plenty by way of philosophical ruminations, but these words do not anchor her. Shelly must breeze carefree into her daydreams and drift into the realms of the past to visit her ancestors. And somewhere between these worlds there is Dolly, who never fails in giving her comfort and advice. But when Shelly tries to befriend two of her teenage classmates in a neighbourhood where prejudice is deeply rooted, she brings about havoc on a mystical level, making waves much too big for Long Island in the 1980s.

Leilani Taneus-Miller

This book is not about me. Yet I lived through the same time and in the same place. So some of the things that happen to Shelly have happened to me, And others like me. I was born in the city but moved to a small town. We became the first blacks in our neighbourhood. And then of course, like Shelly, I was the only black kid in my class. Brushing racism aside was the done thing. As good “negroes” we knew our places as second-class citizens. ‘Work harder, expect less,’ we were told. ‘Just pretend that didn’t happen,’ we were told. Lucky for you, dear reader, I remember enough of what happened to write Shelly’s story.

Austin Macauley Publishers