The Brown Anthology is the kind of self-affirming and thought-provoking book you would read curled up on Sunday evening with a hot cup of chai. It’s the kind of book you find yourself idly thinking about days after. It’s the kind of book you remember where you would usually go blank, when someone asks you what you’re reading. It’s the kind of book that will teach future generations who pick it up, a little bit about us.

The Brown Anthology is a mixed genre collection of poems and prose written by south Asian writers from India, Pakistan, the USA and the UK, on the theme of language. There are also a handful of beautiful illustrations by south Asian artists. Compiled and published by writer Sofia Amina through her micropress 10:10Press, which specialises in anthologies (collections of literary works chosen by a compiler), the book is a peek into the role (south Asian) languages play especially in the lives of second and third generation migrants.

Language is a powerful thing and one that we often take for granted but this collection, through each piece that looks at a small aspect of life and the role language plays in it, illustrates just how important it really is. These glimpses into the lives of others show that words have a raw power and words in an ancestral language that is used mostly in moments of anger, pain, surprise or joy, are the most powerful of all.

Through her micropress, Amina is to “exploring what can be achieved artistically when the space belongs to one culture, with only one theme to play with.” It’s aim is “for there to be no need or prerequiste to explain, justify or create art to suit the perception of brown” and she achieves this perfectly. This is a body of unique work that most likely will not be understand by those outside of the community and therefore unlikely to be published elsewhere. Amina has created a space for south Asian work to be published without first passing it through a white lens.

This resilient endeavour is a also a great look into the relationship second and third generation individuals from the diaspora have with have with first generation migrants such as how they struggle to amalgamate two halves of themselves, how so many things are often lost in translation and how words hold connections. There is a strong underlying theme across many pieces of a sense of otherness; English is the language that they are and their ancestral language is who their family is - part of them but not quite them.

Lost in a Jangal for example, a short story by K. Devan is particularly memorable for the emotion it evokes as the central character who never learnt Hindi, connects with their grandma who has dementia, through the few words they have left. On the other hand, Farhana Khalique’s poem, Chai Tea, Naan Bread, perfectly describes the frustration we feel when we hear such terms. But language is not just about words and Arji Manuelpillai’s poem The English Translation of a Tuk Tuk Horn in India is a humorous look at all the different things that infamous noise means. There is even a poem in Urdu.

The Brown Anthology is a heartwarming must-read that makes you feel less alone in your experiences and gives you pause to relish the beautiful feel of words from different south Asian languages. It’s part of a cultural reckoning.

You can buy the book here.