Still looking for my perfect mixed race memoir, but this was a welcome entry in the category. I found the author reflective in a satisfying way, but not terribly introspective. The book felt a little descriptive at times where I would have welcomed more analysis or consideration of alternate paths.

This honest memoir, "Almost Brown" by Charlotte Gill was an insightful and thoughtful expression of growing up with mixed raced parents, their influences and confusion. Powerful depiction of characters and complicated parental love and perspectives. I really appreciated this book. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the review copy. All opinions are my own.

I do not generally rate memoirs on principle, but I love reading them. And, Almost Brown by Charlotte Gill is a thought-provoking exploration of race, family, and diaspora. It's one I'd recommend to others.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

While I felt this book was as a bit hard to get into, I was glad I stuck with it. A great read on multi cultural family life and the impacts on all members of the family.

As a mixed kid, this book was really to the point and had perspectives I was looking for. I wish I’d had it as a child to articulate my experience. I have a huge respect for the author and their perspective.

This story follows the quite dysfunctional journey of a biracial family and it will show you things you may not have thought of and it will pull on your emotions. This book will shed light on a sensitive subject but it will make you more aware and better off. Really enjoyed this.

This memoir is a weirdly hopeful recounting of a culture-clashing dysfunctional family, that began with a perhaps too-idealistic couple ignoring a world (and their families) not ready for their union, Sadly, the marriage ended many years later in more of a whimper of apathy than the bang that might have been expected. Gill recounts the many times and ways she has considered answers to questions like "What am I?" or "What does it mean to be a person of color when the concept is a societal invention and really only applies halfway if you are half white?" She spends time now with a father she distanced herself from for years, and their interactions reveal the depth of past wounds and the grace brought by forgiveness. Gill's story is moving and honest, and relevant reading for everyone.

This happened to be my second read in a row about brown fathers, and it’s definitely interesting observing the similarities in their ego. The stories and journeys are different, but they depict the various manifestations of the personalities’ interaction with the ethos. I found this an interesting read!

Charlotte Gill and her twin brother Alex are the children of a British mother and a Sikh father. The first part of the book is given over to the conflicted relationships in her family and the history behind their tensions.

The title, almost brown, comes from the difficulties she faced as she struggled to find where she fit in. She found information online on how to present a diversity statement in an interview process. The suggestion was to “openly declare one’s own subjective positioning. But I shrink from that task, too. I don’t want to state my race.”

Her brother looks like their father but she, favoring her white blonde, blue eyed mother, passes for white. She didn’t want to be given a position because of her race - “I’m not sure I want to be ambiguously, ethnic —just brown enough to pull it off, but sufficiently white to make a good ‘fit.”

Her parents marriage collapsed when she was in her teens and then she entered the competitive world of academia. She asks, “What does it mean to be brown? And where does this racial compartment cleave to whiteness?” The bookends of the book are her relationship with her father which was absolutely lovely. Redemption.

While tedious at times, I still give this two thumbs up.

An overall interesting read esp about the authors father. It was also well written with great prose. The book started to drag when the story got to Covid and then the last couple of chapters overall but will still recommend.

Almost Brown is a hybrid of narrative nonfiction and memoir that explores race through Gill's lens of growing up half English and half Indian, mostly in Canada and the United States. I loved the early chapters of the book, and Gill has a knack for depicting her father (in particular) as a larger than life character. As fascinating as her father is, Gill doesn't shed nearly as much light on the rest of her family (perhaps because her father is the link to her Indian/"almost brown" roots), to the point that I assumed for a large chunk of the book that her mother had passed away (she had not).

Gill does shed light on the history of being biracial, particularly in British societies/colonies, and illuminates many fascinating factoids, such as the history of the term "mulatto." She shares personal anecdotes of being questioned about her ethnicity, and professional anecdotes about the expectations to diversify college settings. However, she could have succinctly expressed her views in a handful of essays. Her exchanges with her father become repetitive, as do her discomforts with not fitting in easily in many settings. I wanted to know more about her siblings' experiences and views having grown up in the same family, and less about her father's politics. Gill is an adept writer, though, and I would probably try another book by her.

An interesting memoir that's more about Gill's father, their estrangement and their reconciliation than anything else. Gill's father's family pushed him away when he married her mother, a white Catholic. He becomes a strict enforcer of his ethnic and cultural traditions, especially with regard to girls and women, which leads to a rupture in the marriage and in the lives of the family; Gill stayed with her mother. This is also an exploration of her feelings about being biracial and what that means in the world. Thanks to Netgalley for the arc. A good read.

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy of ALMOST BROWN by Charlotte Gill. This was a bit of a slow read for me, but I enjoyed learning about Gill's unique point of view from the diverse background of her parents, to her nostalgic small town 80s upbringing, to her complicated relationship to her father, to her analysis of race and how its affected her personally. Her writing was visceral and richly detailed—she brought all the senses to life. She dove deep into all kinds of historical context for her background and it really was interesting to find out more about. I appreciated her nuanced perspective and the depth and beauty of her storytelling, even if it got a bit dense sometimes.