Basking in My Brown - Fatima Faisal

AUTHOR: Fatima Faisal

ILLUSTRATOR: Anain Shaikh

GENRE: Children's Picture Book.

RATING: 3 stars.

In a Nutshell: I wanted to be 'basking in my brown' along with the girl on the cover, but her 'basking' turned out to be more literal than I had imagined. Mixed feelings.

The little girl on the cover, who is the first person narrator, loves many activities such as flying kites and swimming in the ocean. But her favourite activity is 'basking in the sun.' While playing with her friend Zoya, the latter says that she needs to return home because her mom has warned her not to stay out in the sun too long, for it will make skin too dark. This is when the narrator replies that she's going to stay out all day as her mom says that the sun makes her skin 'a magical brown'. She then goes on to list a range of her favourite brown things, including gulab jamuns and henna, and establishes how we should love our ‘brown’ identity, though not in these exact words.

The intent behind this book is great. In a colorist world that still sees white as supreme and black as ugly or dangerous, the browns are the ones stuck in the middle –aspiring towards white and demeaning towards black even after all these decades of awareness. The book talks of knowing your self-identity and accepting it proudly. It focuses not just on amazing brown items but also a couple of interesting customs followed by brown people originating from Pakistan. It even has some nice cheery slogans for brown kids towards the end.

While I like the thought of embracing the brown, I didn't quite understand why the sun had to be linked to it. The child is already brown, so it's not like a tan would turn her brown. Moreover, the time at which Zoya and the narrator have their conversation is during afternoon, not a safe time for kids to be out in the sun, all the more in tropical countries during summers, though I am sure the dangers of UV rays exist even in temperate climes. It seemed like a very forced connection. I’d have loved the premise to be presented without sandwiching it in between the idea of relishing the yellow sun rays that turn her brown skin magical. (?!?!?) The word 'basking' in the title should have been left at a metaphorical level.

(Editing to add: Brown people do tan. It's a myth that we don't. The only difference is in the colour. We don't turn red. We go from Cadbury Dairy Milk to Cadbury Bournville. 😛)

The text is quite simple, with not more than 2-3 sentences per page. Some of the examples given by the girl are based in the US while some are from her native country of Pakistan – the change in locale isn’t always clear. The general vocabulary won’t be an issue to the target age group of 5-7 years. However, a glossary would have been helpful to those children who don't know the relationship words such as ‘Khala’ or ‘Ammi’ or even the culture-specific words such as ‘gulab jamun’.

The illustrations are cute, no doubt about that. The cover art gives you a great clue of how the rest of the pages would be. Keeping to the theme of ‘brown’, the colour tone is quite earthy and natural, complementing the content well.

Overall, loved the thought, but found the execution okay.

My thanks to Modern Marigold Books and Edelweiss+ for the DRC of “Basking in My Brown”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.