Letters to a Young Brown Girl

First printing: 2500 copies. Letters to a Young Brown Girl is Barbara Jane Reyes’s sixth full-length poetry collection. Her previous book, Invocation to Daughters, was published by City Lights Publishers in 2017 and received starred reviews in Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, among other reviews. Her previous BOA collection, Diwata, was published in 2010 and has continued to sell through multiple printings. Barbara Jane Reyes tackles issues of immigration, race, and sexism head-on from the very first page. These poems draw on lived experience to highlight the double standards, machismo, pressures, and violence that young black and brown girls face in their day-to-day lives. The collection was inspired by the letters Reyes has received from aspiring and emerging Filipina writers looking for advice, reassurance, and affirmation. Though the title alludes to Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Reyes subverts Rilke’s advice by acknowledging and validating the very real fears of harassment and violence that, in Reyes’s words, “makes a Filipina, a brown girl so fearful that she subverts her own writing.” The earliest poems in this collection began as a response to the advertising emails Barbara Jane Reyes received from beauty companies bombarding her with products to make her instantly pretty by Eurocentric standards. “I am older now, and my skin is dark, and the beauty bombarding us is neither of these things,” said Reyes. Barbara Jane Reyes is a well-known Filipina American writer who has been interviewed by BBC World Service, NEA ArtWorks, and The Rumpus, among others. She is widely connected in the literary and academic communities. Publication will coincide with the author’s events for Filipino American History Month in October 2020. Barbara Jane Reyes has been keeping a blog on her website about the making of this book. She is sharing the posts on her Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Strong regional appeal in areas with visible, organized Filiipino and Asian American communities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and New York City. The collection features several multilingual poems that incorporate English, Tagalong, and Spanish. Strong appeal for booksellers looking to highlight bilingual/multilingual books.