Telling the brown story
Dr. Kamal Al-Solaylee, Journalism professor, Faculty of Communication & Design
According to Dr. Kamal Al-Solaylee, “being brown is premised on a worship of whiteness and a fear of blackness.”
That’s one of the key tenets of the Journalism professor’s latest bestseller Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone). Brown won the prestigious Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and was shortlisted for the 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award. A former Globe and Mail writer, Dr. Al-Solaylee defines brown people as “the world’s largest HR department,” providers of low-paid, labour-intensive work who are relegated to behind-the-scenes roles in the global narrative.
Dr. Al-Solaylee’s previous book, Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes, was also a commercial and critical success, named the 2013 Toronto Book Award and Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail and Amazon.ca. Both books were made possible, in part, by creative grants from TMU.
At TMU, our diversity of cultures makes us more creative in solving the world’s complex challenges.
Photo credit: Arthur Mola