WINNER OF THE 2007 CAVE CANEM POETRY PRIZESelected by Claudia RankineProse poems that profile the interrelationship of the two central characters, looking deeply into their psyches and thoughts of race and class, and identity.
Welcome to Nowhere, kid. Life starts here. What's the problem? Sixteen-year-old Filipino American Angelo Rivera will tell you flat out. Life sucks. He's been uprooted from his San Diego home to a boring landlocked town in the middle of nowhere. Behind him, ocean waves, his girlfriend, and the biggest skateboarding competition on the California coast. Ahead, flipping burgers at his parents' new diner and, as the only Asian in his all-white school, being trolled as "brown boy" by small-minded, thick-necked jocks. Resigned to being an outcast, Angelo isn't alone. Kirsten, a crushable ex-cheerleader and graffiti artist, and Larry, a self-proclaimed invisible band geek, recognize a fellow outsider. Soon enough, Angelo finds himself the leader of their group of misfits. They may be low on the high school food chain, but they're determined to hold their own. Between shifts at the diner, dodging bullies, and wishing for home, Angelo discovers this might not be nowhere after all. Sharing it can turn it into somewhere in a heartbeat.
An uncompromising portrait of identity, family, religion, race, and class that “cuts to the bone” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) told through Omer Aziz’s incisive and luminous prose. In a tough neighborhood on the outskirts of Toronto, miles away from wealthy white downtown, Omer Aziz struggles to find his place as a first-generation Pakistani Muslim boy. He fears the violence and despair of the world around him, and sees a dangerous path ahead, succumbing to aimlessness, apathy, and rage. In his senior year of high school, Omer quickly begins to realize that education can open up the wider world. But as he falls in love with books, and makes his way to Queen’s University in Ontario, Sciences Po in Paris, Cambridge University in England, and finally Yale Law School, he continually confronts his own feelings of doubt and insecurity at being an outsider, a brown-skinned boy in an elite white world. He is searching for community and identity, asking questions of himself and those he encounters, and soon finds himself in difficult situations—whether in the suburbs of Paris or at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Yet the more books Omer reads and the more he moves through elite worlds, his feelings of shame and powerlessness only grow stronger, and clear answers recede further away. Weaving together his powerful personal narrative with the books and friendships that move him, Aziz wrestles with the contradiction of feeling like an Other and his desire to belong to a Western world that never quite accepts him. He poses the questions he couldn’t have asked in his youth: Was assimilation ever really an option? Could one transcend the perils of race and class? And could we—the collective West—ever honestly confront the darker secrets that, as Aziz discovers, still linger from the past? In Brown Boy, Omer Aziz has written an eye-opening book that eloquently describes the complex process of creating an identity that fuses where he’s from, what people see in him, and who he knows himself to be.
Little Brown Boy's inspirational message makes it a perfect gift for brown boys around the world. The simplicity of its message touches the heart of children and speaks to the inner boy in every adult male that reads it. This book is an affirmation for young boys to dream big without limitation. Through playful, and vivid illustrations, Little Brown Boy motivates young readers to learn and be proud of their own cultural heritage and gifts and how they fit into the world as they grow, explore, and begin to create for themselves. The joys of being a Little Brown Boy is a vividly illustrated, culturally-based children's book that brings the lived experiences of Little Brown Boys from various backgrounds to life. Little Brown Boy will give your Little Brown Boy the confidence and esteem to be bold and proud of his brown skin.