Omer Aziz Presents Brown Boy: A Memoir at the Cambridge Public Library
When:
Wednesday, Jul 26, 2023 6:00p -
7:30p
Wednesday, Jul 26, 2023 6:00p -
7:30p
Where:
Cambridge Public Library
449 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02138
Admission:
FREE
Hosted by:
Categories:
Accessible Spots, Art, Lectures & Conferences
Event website:
https://cambridgepl.libcal.com/event/10925261
Join the Cambridge Public Library for a conversation with Omer Aziz about his debut memoir Brown Boy. This is a hybrid event, and registration is required. The in-person session will meet at the Main Library (449 Broadway) in the Lecture Hall at 6 p.m.
Brown Boy, Omer Aziz’s first book, follows his journey through education from a tough neighborhood on the outskirts of Toronto to an academic career that took him to Queen’s University in Ontario, Sciences Po in Paris, Cambridge University in England, and Yale Law School. Aziz’s path is fraught with feelings of doubt and insecurity at being an outsider as a brown-skinned boy in an elite white world. Aziz wrestles with the contradiction of feeling like an Other and his desire to belong to a Western world that never quite accepts him. Brown Boy grapples with the complexities of identity, race and class.
Omer Aziz was born to working-class parents of Pakistani origin in Toronto, Canada, and with the help of scholarships, became the first in his family to go to college in the West. Aziz has clerked for the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria and served as a foreign policy advisor in the government of Justin Trudeau. He has held residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell and has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, New York magazine, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and many other publications. He was most recently a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. Brown Boy is his first book.
