Brown Boy

Brown Boy is an uncompromising interrogation of identity, family, religion, race, and class, told through Omer Aziz’s incisive and luminous prose.

In the early 2000s, Toronto, Omer Aziz’s working-class neighbourhood is miles away from the wealthy white downtown. A first-generation Pakistani Muslim boy, Omer struggles to find his place in a world of violence and uncertainty, torn between cultures old and new. Dreading the aimless, angry future that he sees other young men succumbing to, Omer clings to his love for books and education, dreaming of a wider world.

 

That dream sees him through some of the most prestigious international institutions, from Ontario to Paris to Cambridge—and finally to Yale Law School. Yet despite his success, Omer has never banished the insecurities and doubts that come with being an outsider; a brown-skinned boy in an elite white universe that has never really accepted him. The more books he reads and the higher Omer soars, the stronger his need for community and identity becomes, pushing him to question everything and everyone around him. Was assimilation ever really an option? Can you truly transcend the barriers of race and class in a system that throws up obstacles at every turn? And can we—the collective West—ever honestly confront the darkness and consequences of our past?

 

Weaving together Omer’s powerful personal narrative with the stories and people that moved him, Brown Boy is an articulation of contradictions, displacement, and belonging. It’s a book for anybody who has ever felt unwanted or out of place; a testament to the complex process of creating an identity that fuses where you’re from, what people see in you, and who you know yourself to be.

"A sterling portrait of personal revelation, cuts to the bone." -- Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

"A brilliant and moving memoir of, among other things, class migration and the choices made by outsiders. Aziz writes with sensitivity and honesty about the tensions between growing up in a working class immigrant home and the worlds of elite education and politics. This book will surely make it onto any reading list exploring the twin preoccupations of our time: race and class." -- Zia Haider Rahman, author of In The Light of What We Know 

"Omer Aziz’s astonishing journey from economic hardship and violence to Yale and becoming a foreign policy advisor would be fascinating even if it didn’t tell us things we absolutely need to know: Why have the white and minority communities withdrawn into their separate corners; what can be done to bring them together? An essential memoir." -- Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life and An Obedient Father.

“This breathtaking, brilliant memoir had me from page one—I couldn’t put it down. Omer Aziz is a poet, his writing luminous. Brown Boy is eye-opening, achingly honest, alternately hilarious and heartbreaking—an unforgettable book.” —Amy Chua, author of Political Tribes and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

"Brown Boy is a poignant, unflinching exploration of cultural identity: the roles we perform, the ways we are misperceived, and the conflicted feelings we can have about our pasts. Omer Aziz illuminates what it is like to be the child of immigrants and the unique invisibility that comes with being South Asian. I saw myself reflected in these pages. How rare, to encounter one’s story with such candor and vulnerability. How rare, and how necessary." —Maya Shanbhag Lang, author of What We Carry, a New York Times Editors’ Choice