I finished reading Nikesh Shukla’s memoir Brown Baby and it was an interesting experience. It’s structured almost as conversations and recollections that he wants to have with his daughter when she’s older. He tries to pick apart the complex tangle of race, culture, heritage, identity and sexism that his child, being a mixed race baby and a girl would face growing up in Britain whilst also processing his grief over the passing of his mother, rather suddenly years ago. A lot of it also deals with...

Nikesh Shukla’s beautiful and powerful memoir was certainly one of the best books I have ever read. With words full of tenderness, joy and grief, it struck me deep in my bones with revelations and wisdom. I loved it. Highly recommend!

Brown Baby is a memoir by Nikesh Shukla that is fashioned as part letter to his daughter, part advice and snippets from the author’s life. At the heart of it is the author’s own grief over his mother’s death that shakes us time and again throughout its pages, it becomes more pronounced while thinking of his daughter, new parenthood and his own struggles.How to raise a Brown Baby in the current climate is a question that really bothers Nikesh and the struggle to raise a mixed race daughter in the...

1.5* So repetitive and unfunny. If one could gauge what a person is like by their memoirs, Nikesh Shukla would be downright annoying. He is a shockingly poor writer whose book needed to be heavily edited. Ever so slightly redeeming at the end hence the additional half star. I’m just glad I didn’t spend a dime on this trash.

I wasn’t prepared for the opening of this memoir and the immediate effect it had on me. When I say that within the first five pages of this book I had already cried, I’m not exaggerating. Yes, I am a highly sensitive, emotional person, and it was one of *those* days but even so. It was the instant step into grief and new parenthood all at once that I didn’t see coming and it was all too relatable.When you have a child of your own after you’ve lost a parent, you’re met by a whole new dimension of...

Just read it!

RTC

The best chapter in this book was the one about Nikesh's mum's snack cupboard and all the treats it used to contain and how he had a need to recreate a nostalgic tea time from his childhood. He could have built on this aspect of his past instead of turning this memoir into a diatribe of a sensitive new age guy (remember that one?) in the late 2000's.

For a long time I've really admired Nikesh Shukla to me he exudes warmth and speaks with a passion and humility that really makes someone pay attention.I was super excited to read Brown Baby and it didn't disappoint at all. In fact it's phenomenal. Shukla's memoir is warm, witty and is exactly what I expected from listening to him talk. Little did I know how much I would learn. Brown Baby is a dedication to his children, a beautifully written book where he shares his knowledge and the lessons he...

4.25 stars.Review soon!

Brown Baby is a funny and beautifully-written memoir which delves into what it means to grieve, to parent and to live as a brown person in the UK today. Shukla writes movingly about the loss of his mother and is unflinching in his examination of their complex relationship before her death - and indeed, after it. He also openly explores his role as a father and I loved the way the book addresses his daughter, nicknamed 'Ganga' for the purposes of this book, throughout. Through the chapters, we ar...

I was pulled from emotion to emotion throughout the entirety of this book. Not only does this book cover racism, stereotypes and racial injustice as the title may suggest; it discusses grief, gender inequality, parenting, climate change and so much more.

This is a tough one because I'm struggling to identify whether my issues with this book were because I'm projecting my indifference to children, or because my type-a personality cannot cope with the stream of consciousness writing style. Perhaps the latter is intentional because he's a father and being a father is difficult, as he reminds us...a lot. Beyond the dad talk, I probably found the societal virtue signalling and hamfisted climate ramblings egregious. Also egregious is how repetitive th...

RATING: This book gets four stars because it’s entertaining yet thought-provoking as it deals with a myriad of issues seamlessly. From recounting racist slurs thrown at his child to humorous anecdotes about his Indian heritage (note – in Nigerian households the butter and ice creams tubs are filled with rice too), Shukla opens up his life on the page.GOOD BITS: At its’ heart, this is a book about grief. The loss of Shukla’s mother is infused in every single page and you can feel him grappling to...

As I embarked upon making my own writing dreams a reality, I stumbled upon author Nikesh Shukla, a fellow Indian of Kenyan descent, who was of similar age, and though he was Gujerati, and Male, to my Punjabi and Female, there were enough similarities to make his career interesting to me.Brown Baby is a memoir, as well as a guide to life for his own Brown Baby, Ganga, and her sister, but the memories he recounts, the feelings he encounters, growing up as a British-born Indian, a child of immigran...

I was very kindly given an e-ARC of this book via Netgalley and Pan Macmillan/Bluebird.Poetic, thoughtful and deeply personal, Nikesh Shukla's memoir 'Brown Baby', written especially for his daughters is a poignant examination of parenting, grief, love and change. Dipping into topics of death, race, gender, food, sleeping (the chapter titled 'Fucking hell, go to sleep' is particularly heart-breaking and funny at the same time. Shukla's writing style feels more like prose than nonfiction, but it

Brown Baby is one of those books that is written for the young and the old, for the whites, blacks, browns and all ethnicities, races and colors, for all the gender; for all the people who need to unlearn, relearn and learn simple things about a human, about how we must not look at each other as OTHER but with the same eye we look at everyone else. The otherization has led to segregation on the basis of race, gender, caste, class, nationality, and so on. What every individual demands is to let t...

Nikesh Shukla has an honest conversation about family, race and feminism, addressed to his young daughter. It is beautifully written and as a daughter myself, I’m proud of him and I’m grateful for him for writing Brown Baby.I also loved seeing Gujarati words in a book, the warming relationship to food and the ‘End of credits sting: how to eat a mango properly’ page at the end!

Brown Baby is full of wise nuggets, brutal honesty, and heartwarming, tender moments from a father to his daughter as he raises her to be the best version of herself.I've lost track of the amount of times I've cried, laughed, and nodded in agreement and solidarity as a fellow Gujarati while reading this.

A really beautiful book that brought me to tears several times. Would recommend to everyone!