Browntown Diaries, the debut novel by teen author Imaan Gill, today officially launched its all or nothing crowdfunding campaign and started accepting pre-orders on Kickstarter at http://kck.st/2ZEchRE .

Browntown Diaries introduces us to the crazy, weird, and just plain funny life of Karan, a teenager trying to survive a summer with his brown family, in a brown town. He spends his summer on awkward family trips, learning Indian “negotiating” skills (aka: extortion), exploring his sister’s Martian roots, and keeping track of his grandpa’s gang activities.

Imaan explained that the character of Karan is loosely based on an exaggerated version of himself, and the overall story is based on his actual experiences from living in a South Asian family.
Imaan was inspired to write the book as he felt that minorities are underrepresented in literature, making it hard for young people to find characters they relate to. “As a kid I’ve always loved reading, but it was difficult for me to ever find a book that represented me and my culture. Since I had an interest in writing I decided to take up the challenge of creating a book that would represent myself and those like me.”

“The book is full of humour, but it also deals with themes of family and finding your own culture. Regardless of ethnicity, everyone will find this story very relatable to them. We live in a world where there’s a constant movement of people from one place to another. Being uprooted and moving to a new place is a very unique experience, especially if you have multiple generations living together, all at their own levels of comfort, as was the case with my parents and grandparents moving to Canada from India. Browntown Diaries is the result of old traditions interacting with new experiences.”

Browntown Diaries is a 200 page novel enhanced with over a hundred illustrations. To read about Imaan’s creative journey, and to pre-order the book and get your rewards, you can go directly to the Browntown Diaries Kickstarter page at http://kck.st/2ZEchRE or visit browntowndiaries.com for more info.