Brown Girl Dreaming
I've been hearing good things about Jacqueline Woodson's memoir in verse since before it came out. It won so many awards that you practically can't see the original cover anymore. I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it.
While this book is technically marketed towards children (it's recommended for ages 10 and up), it works incredibly well no matter what age you are. Woodson focuses on her time as a child. She was born in Ohio, but she left when she was barely a year old. She and her siblings lived with their grandparents in South Carolina for several years before her mother moved them all to Brooklyn.
But this isn't just about Woodson either. There's an incredible sense of family and history in these pages, and it's clear that this has had a profound effect on Woodson and her sense of place in the world. A lot of the book takes place before she's even born or could possibly have memories, which is a bit unusual for a memoir. She talks about her parents, her aunts and uncles, her grandparents, and even touches on ancestors from further back in time.
This sense of family history combines seamlessly with American history. Front and center in this book is the experience of being black in America, of being black in the south and black in NYC. Protests and marches and sit-ins are mentioned casually - they were clearly part of the very fabric of Woodson's life for as long as she's been aware of the world. And she quickly shows just how complicated these issues are, by placing her mother's defiance next to her grandmother's reluctance to make waves and not condemning either.
This book is really an amazing accomplishment, saying so much with so few words. Woodson's has a gift for painting a complete picture with a minimum of brush-strokes. She zeroes in on the truth of her experience, focusing in on the handful of details that matter the most to the story as a whole.
While this book is technically marketed towards children (it's recommended for ages 10 and up), it works incredibly well no matter what age you are. Woodson focuses on her time as a child. She was born in Ohio, but she left when she was barely a year old. She and her siblings lived with their grandparents in South Carolina for several years before her mother moved them all to Brooklyn.
But this isn't just about Woodson either. There's an incredible sense of family and history in these pages, and it's clear that this has had a profound effect on Woodson and her sense of place in the world. A lot of the book takes place before she's even born or could possibly have memories, which is a bit unusual for a memoir. She talks about her parents, her aunts and uncles, her grandparents, and even touches on ancestors from further back in time.
This sense of family history combines seamlessly with American history. Front and center in this book is the experience of being black in America, of being black in the south and black in NYC. Protests and marches and sit-ins are mentioned casually - they were clearly part of the very fabric of Woodson's life for as long as she's been aware of the world. And she quickly shows just how complicated these issues are, by placing her mother's defiance next to her grandmother's reluctance to make waves and not condemning either.
This book is really an amazing accomplishment, saying so much with so few words. Woodson's has a gift for painting a complete picture with a minimum of brush-strokes. She zeroes in on the truth of her experience, focusing in on the handful of details that matter the most to the story as a whole.
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