What Does Brown Mean?

In a World That Often Feels Black and White, I’ve Learned to Embrace My Space in the Middle

Zócalo is celebrating its 20th birthday this year! As part of the festivities, we’re publishing reflections and responses that revisit and reimagine some of our most impactful stories and public programs. Writer, actor, and filmmaker Christopher Rivas reflects on what Brown—as color, as concept—means to him, inspired by the 2017 Zócalo event “What Does Blue Mean?“

“Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color…” opens Maggie Nelson’s book, Bluets, a study devoted to the hue that spurred a Picasso period, …