Almost Brown: A Memoir

Gill (Eating Dirt) recalls her upbringing as the daughter of a white English mother and an Indian father in this memoir. The author begins the book with her parents, who met in London as young doctors in the 1960s and married. Neither of their parents were pleased; her paternal grandfather stopped speaking to her father for decades. Alone in the world and with a growing family, the Gills moved from London to Canada and then to the U.S., where the differences between their personalities and years of fiscal misspending caused a rift in the marriage. Shortly after her parents’ divorce, Charlotte grew weary of her father’s ideas about her college plans, and they became estranged. Intermingled are histories about biracial relations globally, plus the author’s thoughts about being biracial. Some information, such as the colonization of India, flows seamlessly with whatever is happening in her life. However, other insights seem to come out of nowhere, especially in later chapters.