Brown Baby
Brown Baby by Nikesh Shukla
Reviewed by Mimi
📕📕📕📕📕
This is a book written to Nikesh's daughter with the heartbreaking backdrop of the loss of his mother.
How do you raise a brown baby?
How do you cope with the loss of a parent when that parent would have been the source of guidance having raised brown babies herself?
This is not just a light-hearted read with funny anecdotes of a dad feeling overwhelmed at the responsibility of raising daughters (although there are those moments that Nikesh has kindly written as part of a Bradley Cooper movie!). This is a deep, thoughtful account of developing future citizens who have potential disadvantages from birth. It is a tangible account of why representation is so important, why you have to consider everything carefully when raising a child of colour, how the smell of the spices in the kitchen invoke such strong emotions and how you prepare for the slightly terrifying world we now live in.
Some parts of this were incredibly hard to read, sometimes because the grief was so tangible and sometimes because I felt some of my own views were challenged. I have never read anything like this- it's a special book. It feels like opening a window into a personal diary and that's why for me, it had such a big impact.
