BROWN BOY

The story of a Pakistani Canadian who rose from one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Toronto to become a foreign policy adviser for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Aziz grew up in an immigrant family in Scarborough, a working-class Toronto suburb nicknamed Scartown, which was “always described by its gangs, its shootings, stabbings, and immigrant families.” The author writes candidly about his experiences with bullying and struggling to keep his grades up despite his natural curiosity. In 2003, the family moved to Mississauga, where his father managed to buy a house. Afraid of some of his classmates’ violent tendencies, Aziz transformed himself into a “goon,” and his teachers fretted about his wasted potential. Amid this turmoil, he happened upon his grandmother watching then presidential candidate Barack Obama giving a speech on CNN. “I stood, stunned, solitary in my amazement,” he writes. “It wasn’t just how the man looked but what he was saying: how his name had given him problems, how he had struggled to see a place for himself in the world, how one’s background should not be a barrier to one’s success, how he was running for the highest office in the land to help those who had been left behind.” At that moment, Aziz realized he could “educate myself out of my apathy.” He went on to earn scholarships to Queen’s University, Cambridge, and Yale Law School before becoming an adviser to the Trudeau administration. Aziz provides a unique glimpse into a working-class, immigration experience rarely found in American literature. However, the overwritten prose lacks nuance, and the author attributes many major life transitions to small moments (like Obama’s speech). Furthermore, some of his (mostly negative) descriptions of poor neighborhoods and immigrant families are reductive. While Aziz’s pain is palpable and his story inspiring, the book would have benefited from less raw emotion and more processing and analysis.

An intermittently intriguing but undercooked memoir about the Pakistani Canadian experience.