Brown Girl, Brownstones(Going Home again)

Going Home Again
In Paule Marshall’s novel Brown Girl, Brownstones the story takes place in the America of the 1950ties where union with the ideals, values and traditions that declare one an “American” is only possible beneath one skin, the white skin. Every other skin exists in a fractured double consciousness; lost in duality, vainly seeking a unification which endlessly eludes the non-white experience. W.E.B Dubois wrote in his paper The Souls of Black Folk “Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?” Selina, the central character of Brown Girl, Brownstones, is an outcast and a stranger in two worlds; the Bajan world of her mother and the American world of her birth but this is a choice that Selina makes as she seeks an identity that is her own.
A child’s identity is obtained through the union of their parents; Selina’s small soul cannot take root in the war torn home of her parents. The constant struggle between her parents destroys her sense...