Brown: The Last Discovery of America (Paperback)

~ (Author) "TWO WOMEN AND A CHILD IN A GLADE BESIDE A SPRING..." (more)
Key Phrases: scholarship boy, United States, Latin America, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"I write about race in hope of undermining the notion of race in America," notes Rodriguez (Hunger of Memory) in this provocative and challenging meditation on identity, racial and otherwise, in American culture. Relishing the contradictions of his own life as a "queer Catholic Indian Spaniard at home in a temperate Chinese city in a fading blond state in a post-Protestant nation," Rodriguez uses the color "brown" as a metaphor for in-between states of being ("brown bleeds through the straight line unstaunchable the line separating black from white") and as a symbol of the nonlinear and the unexpected: "all paradox is brown." Beautifully written in a literary style accessible and lyrical, this book draws upon a far-reaching range of cultural figures and artifacts e.g., Milton, James Baldwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Lauren advertisements, Leontyne Price in the opera Cleopatra, Edith Sitwell, Showboat, Carlos Fuentes, Francis Parkman's Oregon Trail to make his case that our historical and contemporary conceptualization of race is rudimentary and psychologically and culturally damaging. He isn't afraid to challenge recent left orthodoxy, finding, for example, that he "trusted white literature, because I was able to attribute universality to white literature, because it did not seem to be written for me." This book is written for anyone looking for a way out of limiting self-conceptions.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

For Rodriguez, the "browning" of America reveals a mixing of the races; hence, the "erotic" of the title. This completes a trilogy on U.S. public life begun with Hunger of Memory and Days of Obligation.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (March 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142000795
• ISBN-13: 978-0142000793
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #315,633 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars America through a glass darkly, April 2, 2002

By	Moises Hernandez (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brown: The Last Discovery of America (Hardcover)

5 STARS. Mr. Rodriguez is an excellent social essayist of America's many converging streams.

I have just finished reading Richard Rodriguez's new book "Brown: The Last Discovery of America" and I am contemplating how long I should wait before beginning it again. Here is a writer worth many readings. His subject and approach invite numerous visits, viewings from varied moods and perspectives.

In this (his third book) Mr. Rodrigez's takes as his theme the notion of brown as intermingled, mixed, impure and argues that it is the inevitable conclusion of America. Along the way he gives us his reading (a brown reading?) of Richard Nixon, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ben Franklin, the Latin American migration, the persistance of Puritanism, sexual politics, cubism, Melcolm X, Catholism, public space, and the American insistance on authenticy against its impulse for the theatrical. Many of these are themes Mr. Rodriguez has covered before. Here he revisits some familiar themes through the lense of brownness, turning them over by a different light, holding them up to a different horizon. He is a writer of a fugue like repetition, striking humor in one note and discomfort in the next, leaving the reader to follow the argument off the page. He is a writer who does not condescend to his readers with trite resolutions or comforting reassurances. His style is personal and political, contemplative and engaging. He is an excellent stylist of a kind rarely seen on bookshelves today.

This is not an easy read. Don't buy this book if you're looking for a quick and fun read. It is a provocative and perplexing tune Mr. Rodriguez carries. He points in directions that he leaves uncharted, exposes personal wounds that he leaves unmended. He invites us into an uncomfortable space of hanging questions.

Thoses who have read Mr. Rodrigez before will probably enjoy this newest work (assuming you enjoyed his other work). New readers may find him challanging (some friends have found his style dense or obscure). But if you are loking for an intelligent and engaging converstaion on the meaning of what America is becoming and why undermining of America's very notion of race is inevitable, then I strongly urge you to read this terrific book. "Reader, meet Mr. Rodriguez. Mr. Rodriguez, your interlocutor."

Moises Hernandez ...

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's A Brown World, June 11, 2002

By	Bruce Crocker "agnostictrickster" (Whittier, California United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Brown: The Last Discovery of America (Hardcover)

Richard Rodriguez's Brown is a stream of consciousness journey through brown as metaphor for the very mixed world we are headed towards. As a man of mixed culture [gay, Catholic, American, Mexican descent, indian, writer, etc.], Rodriguez is the perfect person to take us on this brown journey. I know of Rodriguez's writings from the Sunday Los Angeles Times and I read this book on the strength of the newspaper pieces. It was a thought provoking read that had my head swirling and I only got bogged down in chapter 2. Be ready to hit the dictionary and the encyclopedia. I live in a brown neighborhood in Whittier, California, I teach at a brown high school in La Habra, California, and even though my students would label me Anglo [I have reddish hair and spotted skin if anyone cares], given my very eclectic upbringing and interesting ancestry, I hope that I fit in well to the brown world around me. I recommend that you read this book and let Richard Rodriguez get into your head.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brown Lightnin', June 5, 2002

By	D. Tippetts "Sugarpop" (American Fork, Utah United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Brown: The Last Discovery of America (Hardcover)

Strking a white guy from Montana living in the purgatory of the outlands of the West, this book understates its own goals - as it should. And overfulfills its promise. It is shewd, literate, thoughful, and filled with bright insights into our common condition. Surprise and delight somwhere on every page. A dead-on counter to the prevailing post-civil rights race consiousness that prevails in the United States. Marred only by occasional obscurity of reference, and ponderous paragraph.

In another 500 years, we will all be medium brown, and will have to find something else to fight about.