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Kevin Brazil
Kevin Brazil is a writer and critic who lives in London. His writing has appeared in Granta, The White Review, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, Art Review, art-agenda, Studio International, and elsewhere. He is writing a book about queer happiness.

Articles Available Online


Alvaro Barrington, Garvey: Sex Love Nurturing Famalay

Art Review

October 2019

Kevin Brazil

Art Review

October 2019

The unofficial anthem of this year’s London Carnival was ‘Famalay’, a bouyon-influenced soca song that won the Road March in Trinidad & Tobago’s Carnival...

Essay

October 2018

The Uses of Queer Art

Kevin Brazil

Essay

October 2018

In June 2018 a crowd assembled in Tate Britain to ask: ‘What does a queer museum look like?’ Surrounded...

‘Grandma Why are we brown?’   The grandmother puts down the rifle she’s been cleaning Another rifle and a box of ammunition are sitting on the kitchen table in front of her   ‘What?’   ‘Why are we brown?’   ‘We’re not brown, we’re morochas Where did you hear that?’   ‘We were in gym class and Tati shouted, “Ewww!!! She has brown nipples!”’   The kettle comes to a boil and the grandmother stands up to turn off the stovetop She wraps a dishcloth around the iron handle before picking up the kettle Then she puts two bags of coffee in one mug and a teabag in the other and pours in the hot water before bringing both mugs to the table The sugar and spoons are already laid out on the cloth She unwraps the bread, which has been bundled up in cloth to keep warm It came out of the clay oven less than an hour ago   ‘How did she see your nipples?’ she asks, sitting down   ‘We were finishing gym class and had to get changed back into dry clothes So I was sweaty and took off my t-shirt and she saw my boobies Why are we brown?’   ‘We’re not brown’ The grandmother sips from her mug, which she holds in two hands Her gold wedding ring is shoved right up to the top of her finger, where it meets the palm ‘Brown is the wrong word, it’s a filthy color We’re morochas, which is different’ She sips from her mug but the coffee is burning hot and scalds her throat The grandmother grimaces in pain and tears come into her eyes Her granddaughter laughs ‘We’re not brown, we’re morochas, OK?’   ‘But that’s not an answer’ The girl puts two heaped spoonfuls of sugar into her tea, adds milk, cuts two slices of bread and dips them in too The bread swells with milky tea and she starts to scoop it up with the spoon like soup   ‘We’re morochas because the paint ran out while we were being made’   ‘What paint?’   ‘At the place where people are made they didn’t have enough paint to make us really dark We were going to be black, but they

Contributor

July 2018

Kevin Brazil

Contributor

July 2018

Kevin Brazil is a writer and critic who lives in London. His writing has appeared in Granta, The White Review, the London...

Nora Ikstena's ‘Soviet Milk’

Book Review

August 2018

Kevin Brazil

Book Review

August 2018

Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena opens with two women who cannot remember. ‘I don’t remember 15 October 1969,’ says the first. ‘I don’t remember...

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fiction

January 2015

The Vegetarian

Han Kang

TR. Deborah Smith

fiction

January 2015

Originally published as three separate novellas, the second of which secured the prestigious Yi Sang prize, The Vegetarian has...

feature

Issue No. 18

Editorial

The Editors

feature

Issue No. 18

This is the editorial from the eighteenth print issue of The White Review, available to buy here.    In 1991...

fiction

June 2011

Arthur Miller

Michael Amherst

fiction

June 2011

The last time I saw Vin and Jackie we were killing slugs. The three of us had been smoking...

 

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