Jack Pszcynack is watching his world and his town practically burn down in front of him. It was something else to grow up as a kid in the eighties, yet time is hardly on his side. Jack does not only have to live with a last name that no one can pronounce; yet he also endures a verbally (and occasionally physically) abusive family; who are all but him increasingly hysterical concerning the prospect of their neighborhood having a black family move into one of its houses, or worse yet, more than one. Jack finds himself at the epicenter of that American phenomenon known as white flight.
Once Jack’s family decides to put their house up for sale in the hopes of escaping the shifting pigmentation, nearly every white family on the block follows suit, escalating tensions within an already hostile environment. All the while, Jack frets about having to move to a new town before he had a chance to really experience life, and to lose the friends he has become so close with.
Browning Road opens the doors of this traditionally white suburban town and provides a poignant view into a racist community, questioning how and why the inhabitants react to their changing neighborhood. Jack is living his town’s history, and his story shows not only how such “old school” families were resistant towards such transformations, yet also attempts to explain the motivations of racism to begin with. Dishonesty has its purpose, and everything has a price.
Din Swift lives a life of quiet desperation. A mundane job, an abysmal wage, and a one-way road to nowhere permeating his everyday life. All this leaves him and his even more infuriated best friend, Chris, wondering how and why they came to find themselves in this world of an increasingly disposable workforce. A time far different from the “American Dream” they were brought up to know, and a vision that older generations have enjoyed considerably more. They dare to question all this and more.
What Din is not so inclined to share is that he has already quit his job, yet does not have the nerve to tell anyone. Be it a newfound courage or a crazed second wind, Din decides to fix everything by finding a new job and thereby hoist himself out of this rut. In painful and even comical fashion, Din discovers the process of interviewing to be a full-time job in and of itself, and soon realizes why he was so reluctant to resign to begin with. It takes an agonizing twist of fate to reevaluate everything about himself, as well as everyone around him.
Follow his journey as he navigates catastrophic romances, the testing of friendships, and ultimately comes to question if the modern America he lives in, both economically and culturally, may really be within an irreversible era of decline.