Malathi Michelle Iyengar,
Tan to Tamarind: Poems about the Color Brown
Children’s Book Press, 2009.

Ages 6+

In a departure from her first book, the Skipping Stones Honor Award winning story Romina’s Rangoli, the brilliant young teacher and author Malathi Michelle Iyengar brings us Tan to Tamarind: Poems about the Color Brown.  As a child in North Carolina Iyengar was ridiculed by other children and made to feel ashamed of the color of her skin.  “As I got older, though, I began discovering lots of wonderful stories and poems about the color brown, written by and about proud brown people.  When I read their words, I didn’t feel ugly or dirty anymore,” she states in an author’s note at the end of the book.

This literature became the inspiration for Iyengar’s own poems about the color brown, collected here and beautifully illustrated by the versatile and prolific artist Jamel Akib, famous for titles as diverse as Bringing Asha Home and Monsoon to rereleases of The Wind in the Willows, Polyanna, and Around the World in 80 Days.

In Tan to Tamarind, Iyengar celebrates all that it means to be brown and connect with beautiful brown things in the world such as adobe, coffee, topaz, henna, cinnamon, chocolate, and, of course, tamarind.  Vivid oil pastels take us from brown faces in the North American Southwest with coyotes howling in the distance to darker brown faces that smile as brown autumn leaves fly against a backdrop of urban skyscrapers; brown hands holding cups of cocoa and turning the pages of sepia photos in a family album; brown, bangled wrists clapping above ocher hennaed feet that dance amid swirling saris at an Indian wedding celebration.  The final poem culminates in a comprehensive celebration of all things brown and is accompanied by a picture of smiling brown children’s faces - some with straight hair, some kinky; some with hats and some with braids; some in t-shirts, some in saris: all smiling, all happy to be brown and to have commonalities as well as differences.

Iyengar’s poetry trickles down in sweetness like golden brown honey in the sunlight and makes it clear, without protest, that brown is simply beautiful.

Abigail Sawyer
May 2009