Brown: An Erotic History of the Americas

Richard Rodriguez is a very provocative thinker from a well thought out perspective that should be shared and understood. It works well in contrast to older writings by Robert Ardrey. We are a visual species who categorizes, and will always categorize the people, places, things, and ideas we encounter based upon their literal and figurative appearance. Mr. Rodriguez brings to question some of those things we define, and some of those things we mis-define. After over 100 years of scientific research on exactly what makes a breed of man and a society there is no longer any excuse for questionaires which attempt to undermine inequality by mixing culture and race. As he points out, Hispanic is not a race - but a culure, and should not appear in a list to be checked next to white, black, or American Indian - which again are inaccurate. The entire system of boxing into said categories fails both in accuracy and only reinforces the divisions of modern prejudices.

That inconvenient truth or understanding that America is more than what some would like to still believe. We are not black or white (or Hispanic - a nice made up word). We are brown. Black and white both imply voids that either absorb everything (like black) or contrast completely (like white). The truth is in America we are all mixed up. I know that's an ugly truth for many. The reason that it becomes a hang-up here and not so much as in Catholic countries (like Mexico) is that Protestant/Puritan values still live on strong. Be who you want, but don't try to blend lines or anything. Keep to your true pure self! Listen only to "your" type of music. Only eat "your" type of food (none of us is guilty of this one as obese as the country is). Only wear "your" type of clothes. Yes, you can have freedom in America, as long as you fit into your little niche. "You're African-American! You're supposed to listen to Hip-Hop. What are you doing liking Classical music?" Beethoven was the stuff! But anyway the only "race" that in America is tolerated to "cross the lines" in terms of cultural identity is whites (Is it because white pigment blends with other colors without the colors losing their essence?). And this whole "race" thing! Skin has only one color! "Shock"....I'm not speaking blasphemy. It's true. The color is called MELINAN. Actually it's a pigment. The difference in people is the amount you have. Young people today don't have the hang-ups about "race" like the older generations have. It takes a while to get rid of deeply entrenched ideas. This book had my mind spinning. Very insightful and complex. It's dense like others mentioned, but hey life is dense. Americans would like to think of life as uncomplicated with our little categories to put things. But as life (and history) shows us time and time again nothing is really black and white except divinity. And even that isn't as straightforward as some believe. Consider the fact that Jesus Christ, Gautama Buddha, the Prophet Moses, the Prophet Muhammad, Adam and Eve were brown. Think about it! The human world (Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and etc.) is brown. Post-Note: According to the Rodriguez, Brown also means complexity not just the color itself.

Rodriguez has written an ambitious book: who else would be willing to take on the idea of "brown" and all it involves, from the many perspectives from which this writer sees? I teach a university course on Biography and Memoir and his is one of my favorite books to include. I love his attention to the role of the public library, schools, how religion divides and unites us. Increasingly we all live in a "brown" world and Rodriguez shows us how books and culture help us explore that world in its origins and awesome potential for good and for ill. His riffs are right-on target: Malcolm X as latter-day Puritan, Frederick Douglass on the same shelf with Benjamin Franklin in terms of writing memoirs that tell us how to live honestly in This America of Ours. The poetry of Rodriguez's language is not at all what we might come to expect from an analytical writer. His work is closer to poetry that looks back to the multiple historical origins of these Americas, asks about the originary moments of various races, cultures, religions coming together, and what has happened since. By writing evocatively, rather than cut-and-dry rants or analyses, Rodriguez does much to explore the structures that pervade and are promised in present-day America. Rodriguez is worth, will pay back in insights every bit of time you put into reading him. Maybe his identity isn't yours, maybe you will want to dismiss him, but if you read through, stay with this book, I promise - he will get under your skin.

Anyone that things that race relations as an issue has fallen by the wayside or is somehow is a moot point will be enlightened by the eloquent, poetic point of view brought forth by Richard Rodriguez' latest book. Rodriguez does not forgo the often oversimplistic Black-White issue but suggests that they were always a hybrid issue of 'Brown'. America as a dynamic hotbed of ever-Westward expansion; and once the West was won of expansion of a more global nature. Selling the 'American Dream' in an effort to conquer and re-conquer in a never-ending quest for collective conciousness. Rodriguez suggests that the issue of race is not a physical one, but rather how one responds to this conciousness brought about by assimilation. His anecdotes brings things down to a very personal level without which 'Brown' would come across as speculative and academic. Rodriguez paces things so well and his words are so graceful that one is moved not only by his observations and experiences, but also their self-awareness in a historical context.

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 ...