The author discusses some important themes in this book. It is a heartbreaking read. The impact of racism runs through the whole book and it is so sad. The author has written this so well and it’s so raw.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

This is a letter from the author to his daughter, his brown baby, but it’s also an exploration of racism, identity, relationships, parenting, grief, and so much more.
I really enjoyed this book, particularly the parts where Shukla talks about his mother. Those parts were laden with grief, confronting in parts, and so brutally honest that I found myself having to move away from the book to hug my loved ones. The last third of the book was my favourite, the first third was a bit hard for me to connect with.

This book is very different to what I would usually read but I found it compelling and devoured it in two sittings. A deeply personal memoir, written to his eldest daughter but deeply rooted in the author's grief for his mother. I found it both an education and resonant of my own early days as a parent. A fantastic read for any parent, anyone grieving, those concerned about the world our children will inherit and how we best prepare them for what lies ahead. For those concerned with racism, feminism and the climate crises, and those who feel these things don't exist. Really, a book for everyone and anyone.. Thanks to Netgalley for a free review copy, but this has not affected my review.

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 immigrant parents, displaced by society, not really getting why, but then, yeah, getting it, were all emotions I've felt, too.
The passages about his mother and those feelings of love, loss, and guilt were overwhelming.
Add in the fact that his own Brown Baby has a mother who isn't brown, so there are so many other questions, and hurdles to overcome. Again, close to home, as my own brother married a Finnish girl, and their boys are 'Finndian', so yup, more intriguing questions as they grow up, inquisitive.
A heartfelt tribute to a strong mother, a memoir filled with lessons. All in all, a good read.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

A fabulous book which was written by a father to his daughter on a myriad of subjects that he wishes to tell her about. The book feels very personal, at times I felt like I was part of their world and at other times an outsider especially when he talked about privilege and the battles she would face as she grew.

I highly recommend this book.

It's hard to open yourself up and lay down your feelings and vulnerabilities on the page and then share them with others. But that's exactly what it feels like Nikesh Shukla has done in this book. I felt like I had picked up his journal and read personal, intimate details of his life, thoughts, and grief.

This book is, at times, beautiful, sad and thought-provoking. Elements made me angry at what the author had to contemplate about his daughter and her future. Things that, as a white female living in Britain, I'd never had to contemplate and which made me realise my own privileged position.

It's raw and honest. It conveys a father's love for his daughter and the worries he has for her today and which he will carry for her always.

It's tough to review a memoir written from father to child, but alas here I shall try.

This memoir is sectioned into various topic areas, i.e. "how will I talk to you about _______", covering topics such as race, heritage, gender, food, etc.

For around 40% of the book, I was totally engrossed and engaged. I didn't think it was a perfect book but I enjoyed the talk of disordered eating, gender stereotypes, and white dominance. It was a very engaging and interesting memoir!

Sadly, around the point of the chapter on sleep, the author completely lost me. I found myself getting annoyed at the meandering nature of the chapter and I felt it added little to this particular memoir.

It makes sense that this started as a collection of pieces that Nikesh Shukla was going to submit to various publications. At times, it felt disjointed. There was also some overlap in the arbitrary categories Shukla had set up and some repetition, which just annoyed me as an Editor myself. I find when I slip into Editor mode and out of the reading of the book, I know the book isn't hitting in the way it could be.

While some topics felt over labored, there were other topics that I felt were completely missing. For example, Shukla's wife is almost completely absent from the narrative and I was left somewhat confused by this - Shukla and his wife are together and co-parent, so it would make sense to me that she feature more heavily. This led me to feel like Shukla was holding back, which was a strange feeling to have while reading a memoir.

Overall, I felt that this is a memoir that would have benefitted from a stronger editor and a few more years of maturity. And fewer descriptions of poo.

It feels strange to critique a memoir that is written from father to child, something so deeply personal, but this was just my feelings on reading this book as an outsider, and alas it is my role as a reviewer to share honest thoughts and feelings.

Content warnings: death, grief, eating disorder, excrement.

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 weaves a picture of life that feels visceral and real, which isn't something you find in every memoir. There were moments where I certainly felt less than soothed by the material - his conversations on grief and the oddness of parenting definitely brought back memories of my own life - but otherwise, this is a great memoir.

This is a beautiful, heartwarming and at times heartbreaking memoir in which Shukla tells his young daughters the lessons he’s learnt (or is still learning!) about race, identity, family, loss and everything in between.

Of course I can’t relate to everything here - the way Shukla describes his daughter’s rejection of her own, and his skin colour because of the media she sees, and the intolerance around her is completely devastating. He doesn’t hold back at all - he tackles the topic of racism head on with both warmth and rage and it’s another necessary and eye opening read for those of us privileged to never experience this kind of discrimination.

When it comes to parenting a daughter, and the struggles that brings and will keep on bringing, my goodness I could relate. His approach to dispelling gender stereotypes is wonderful and something which I read eagerly as though it was advice for how to navigate parenting in the 21st century. His kindness, warmth, and that overwhelming love for a child are evident in every page he writes.

He also writes very openly and powerfully about his relationship with his parents, and the devastating loss of his mother, which I’ll admit made me quite emotional. Especially the way in which he tries to use food to keep her memory alive and keep that connection to her, and those moments in which he so desperately wants her advice on raising his daughters in an intolerant world.

It’s difficult to do this memoir justice with my words - it made me feel so much within such a short space of time. It’s intimate, refreshingly angry, overflowing with love and loss, hilarious and completely relatable at times. It’s a love letter to his daughters and his hopes for them. An appreciation of the mother he lost. And there’s that wonderful sense of camaraderie for parents raising children right now that just had me nodding along furiously. Seems odd to say for a memoir, but a total warm hug of a book which I know I’ll return to again and again.

I was lucky enough to receive an arc of this but I loved it so much I will be purchasing a physical copy asap.

Described as a memoir this was in fact written as a love letter to his eldest daughter, which added to my love for this book. It felt more personal, you could intensely feel the love Shukla had for her on every page.

The book is separated into chapters in which the author muses how to explain to his daughter some of the difficult truths of life; grief, racism, climate control, his relationship with food, sleep training etc... in which he mixes memories, experiences, fears and hopes into a narrative that took me on an emotional rollercoaster. I was brought close to tears, laughed frequently, had my eyes opened, privilege checked, understanding of the world questioned and learnt so much in less than 260 (not exaggerating when I say I took notes and highlighted as I read). This isn’t a very long book but my goodness it certainly delivers a punch!

Shukla has poured out his vulnerability in this book and it was just beautiful to read, as a parent I felt his words at time transported me back to when my son was little especially the chapter on sleep! I had flashbacks of this!

I cannot recommend this book enough and would also highlight his new podcast, of the same name which continues on the conversation and is just as brilliant. (No I’m not sponsored 😂)

Thank you to @bluebirdbooksforlife and @netgalley for this copy❤️

N.B I am aware that I have started to apply star rating to my reviews but I feel that is inappropriate in the case of memoirs / biographies for me to attribute a rating on another persons life.

Thanks to NetGalley and The Publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review

This is a deeply personal and emotional book. I applaud the author for the openness and vulnerability displayed. Dissecting topics such as race, feminism, familial relationships and more, set against the backdrop of becoming a new father to a brown baby in this crazy world we are living in. The self-deprecating humour was not too my taste, but will be enjoyed by others.

Grief was also a big focus within this book. And the many displays of grieving shows just how difficult that process is. However, at times it felt like I was intruding into a private space, Maybe that was deliberate, but i found it a little uncomfortable. Although, I appreciate that it may provide comfort to those going though similar experiences, to know that they are not alone.

Brown Baby is a moving memoir about race, grief and parenthood in modern Britain. Written as an ongoing narrative to his young daughter, Shukla meanders through a variety of topics, thinking about what it means to be Brown and British, how to raise his children right, with reference to racism, feminism, family, community, life and death, the climate crisis and more. The author's voice is friendly and approachable, at turns brutally honest, funny and sad. His relationship with his late mother and coming to terms with his grief brought me to tears. I highly recommend this beautiful book to all readers, whether you are a parent looking to commiserate on the task of trying to raise good humans, or someone who values a clear, introspective, vulnerable memoir about life, the universe and everything in between.

Embarrassingly, this was my first book by Nikesh Shukla, even though I've seen him speak many, many times at various cultural events in Bristol over the years , and was aware of his growing prominence. Interestingly, in this memoir he covers some ground about his move from London to Bristol, the feelings of uprootedness and loss of identity and the search for a community. As a Bristolian myself, I enjoyed those bits of city travel immensely. But, first things first. ⁠
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Brown Baby is a memoir that has the author's becoming a father at its core and is (supposedly) addressed to his (future grown) eldest daughter, the brown baby from the title. I say supposedly, because half way through the book, the author suddenly and inexplicably starts saying "mate", but then goes back to addressing his daughter again. And repeats this a few times. I found that confusing.
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Anyway, it's extremely refreshing to see the experience of fatherhood reflected in literature, a sadly rare affair. Becoming a parent is one of the most dramatic events in our lives, and talking about it from a men's perspective is a good testament to the strides we've taken over the past decades. Shukla addresses the challenges of raising a mixed-race daughter in these times. There's so much to contend with: race, being a woman, a world full of uncertainty and at the brink of utter disaster. What a life-altering event, such as becoming a parent, inevitably brings to the table is self-reflection, and Shukla touchingly recounts his own relationship with his distant father. The realisation that his father doesn't know how to change a nappy and has never in fact wiped his ass, sends him revisiting the past. ⁠
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Apart from the focus on raising a daughter and the racial challenges that the author skill-fully illustrates by talking about him growing up as a person of colour in the UK, the other major theme in the memoir is the author's grief over the loss of his mother. These bits were heart-breaking and shone the most to me. ⁠

While evoking his mother, Shukla has a whole chapter on food. In there, he recounts that for him food equals home, and discusses a couple of heartbreaking episodes where he tried to recreate his mother's Indian dishes in a vain attempt to bring her back to life. This chapter is such a brilliant representation of Western snack culture, something I've shockingly and gradually discovered after moving to the UK.

All in all, Brown Baby is a stunning memoir by a (sleep-deprived) father who is caring enough to examine his own mechanisms developed through his upbringing, reflect on what kind of father he wants to be, and embark on the challenging journey of raising a daughter. Highly recommend to parents and non-parents alike. Thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for my advanced digital copy.

This was a really interesting part-memoir, part gift for his daughter about the loss of his mother and his wondering about how she might grow up. He talks about the worries about how society is influencing his daughter as she thinks brown skin is not beautiful.


It's really interesting to read Nikesh's thoughts and worries and hopes.

'Brown baby' has definitely made me want to read more of Nikesh Shukla's writing. His style is so readable with just the right balance of clarity, emotion and humour. In this sort-of memoir, he writes directly to his elder daughter, who is five. He writes down his thoughts on how to talk to her about deep or difficult subjects, like the fact that she is mixed race, or climate change, or his family. I really loved that format, and, as a mother of young kids, I could definitely relate to all the questions, agony and difficulty of finding the right words to make this world understandable and welcoming enough to the people you are trying to raise and would do anything to protect.

The book is at its most affecting when Nikesh writes about the grief of losing his mother. He does full justice to the complex nature of this type of pain. There is a chapter where he reflects on his relationship with food and expresses his shame about his relentless snacking. It was very surprising - too few men are willing to talk about this - and the whole time I really wanted to give him a huge hug and give him Pixie Turner's books to read. This chapter then takes such a heartbreaking turn as he finds the last remaining dishes of his mother's cooking in her freezer. He reminisces on the food she made every day for the family, the smells, the sight of her making it, and as he warms up the last of her food to eat it, he is taken back to the time when she was alive. It's so beautiful and sad that I am crying again just remembering it.

Every chapter made a strong impression on me. I was just a bit disappointed with the one about climate change and especially the one about feminism. First because he tells his daughter to wipe her vagina and it is a bugbear of mine when people say vagina when they mean vulva. Also because he kind of concludes that it won't really be for him to teach her to be a feminist. Yet he doesn't mention that he has a powerful example to show her in the way he treats her mother. I think he kind of missed a trick there.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I've been looking forward to reading this ever since I heard Shukla's interview with Deborah Frances White on the Guilty Feminist podcast. Shukla has done a brilliant job in the past of shepherding new and diverse voices into British writing, but in this book he allows himself to reflect on his own life and how he will raise his children in contemporary Britain, underpinned by his grief at the untimely death of his mother and his memories of their relationship. Separated into chapters on subjects such as the climate, sleep, health and systemic racism, the book is both incisive and intimate, as well as providing comfort for those of us who don't have it all figured out and don't know if we ever will. A must-read book.

I absolutely loved this book. I'm not really one for memoirs but wanted to give this a go and it didn't disappoint. It's unlike any other I've read and doesn't follow the traditional route a memoir usually does.

I like how the chapters are separated into sections for his daughters making observations discussing topics of racism, feminism, climate change and the death of his mother.

You can feel the sadness through the pages when he mentions his mother but it's full of hope too.

As someone also from a gujarati heritage, I can identify with the references (the description of a gujarati house was spot on!) and how family members overstep or make you feel uncomfortable. I have a mixed heritage daughter too and this was a breath of fresh air.

Brown Baby by Nikesh Shukla is a memoir about the struggles of bereavement and grief, parenting, race and racism.

Heartfelt, beautiful, touching, genius. I can't believe this is Mr Shukla's first piece of long-form non-fiction. He writes as if he's been doing this all his life - but then again, you can tell he's been thinking all his life. A truly life-affirming and compassionate piece of memoir, about being a son and a father, about being an immigrant, a citizen, a human being. The last few chapters are some of the most moving of any book I've read. Recommended for everyone, especially after the year we've had.