Why Is My Skin Brown ? – Lakshmi Iyer

Description

A warm, funny chapter book about colorism, belonging, and a girl who learns to love the skin she is in.

Sarayu has always known she looks a little different from her friends at school. She has never thought much about it, until a sudden move to India turns her world upside down. Now she is surrounded by cousins, aunties, neighbours and a grandmother who all seem to have strong opinions about how she looks, and especially about her skin colour.

So many questions swirl in Sarayu’s mind. Why do people care so much about skin colour? Why does her Nani keep calling her kaali? And why does it hurt in a way she cannot explain?

Between her new classes, long chats with her dad across time zones, and the warmth of her Bengaluru family, Sarayu begins to find people she can trust, and the courage to ask the questions that matter.

Why Is My Skin Brown? is a South Asian middle grade novel about growing up between cultures, about family expectations and the quiet weight they carry, and about what it takes for a girl to hold on to her own sense of self-worth. For readers ages 8 to 12, and for any Indian American child who has been asked why they look the way they do.

Written by the author of Why Is My Hair Curly?