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    Writing “Brown”: Kamal Al-Solaylee discusses reporting, researching his Governor General’s Award-nominated new book

    BY JASMINE BALA Staff Reporter Journalists need to think of the bigger picture and understand the craft of structuring a long argument if they want to do reporting for book-length work, said Kamal Al-Solaylee, author of the Governor General’s Award-nominated book, Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone). Al-Solaylee’s second book explores the meaning of brownness, which he describes as somewhere between black and white, through research and anecdotes from 10 different countries. He argues that brown people have emerged as a source of cheap labour and become a stereotyped source of Western anxiety surrounding security…

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    Kamal Al-Solaylee’s new book explores the complexities of having brown skin

    BY: ALLISON RIDGWAY Staff Reporter When Kamal Al-Solaylee saw a group of Filipina maids enjoying a picnic in a Hong Kong park during their time off work one Sunday afternoon in 2011, the concept for his next book began to form. That idea solidified when, back home and riding the subway in Toronto, he again saw a large group of Filipina workers talking together and realized that both groups, though an ocean apart, shared two things in common: their work and their skin colour. “I started thinking about the connection between skin colour and work,” explained Al-Solaylee, a professor at…