beautifully lyrical telling of the lives of brown girls growing up and living in Queens. i loved how all-encompassing the narratives were even as they stayed away from homogenising all women of colour as being like a certain stereotype. the author deftly weaves between and among the lives of a myriad of women who all venture down different life paths, share different values and love different people. in this brief but unbelievably poetic book she takes us though the ups and downs of being brown, being a woman and being an immigrant in New York. politics, gender, race and class all intersect as these women both see themselves and their friends/communities grow and shift around them. time and again they are brought together by death, new life, love and family. i loved reading this book which honestly felt more like poetic creative non-fiction than anything else.