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Richard Rodriguez accepts the 2003 Frederic G. Melcher Book Award and reads from Brown. Brown completes a trilogy on American public life by Rodriguez that began with the award-winning Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez and Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father. In Brown, he explores issues of race, arguing that America has been brown since its inception, as he himself is. Brown, in his view, is not a color, but a mixture, evidence of the blending of cultures which began the moment the African and European met within the Indian eye. The son of Mexican immigrants, he reflects on what it means to be Hispanic in America and how Latino immigrants have impacted American culture, changing it from a society that has traditionally seen itself as simply black and white.

The Frederic G. Melcher Book Award is presented annually by the Unitarian Universalist Association to a work published in the United States during the past calendar year judged to be the most significant contribution to religious liberalism. Previous Melcher Book award recipients include David Halberstam for The Children, Wei Jingsheng for The Courage to Stand Alone, and James Carroll for Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews.