Brown Girl Dreaming

Woodson, J. (2014). Brown girl dreaming. New York, NY: Nancy Paulsen Books. Through a series of poems, Jacqueline tells the story of her life growing up during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Growing up, she dealt with her family breaking apart and moving back and forth between the North and the South, never feeling completely at home. Although she struggles with her reading, Jacqueline is able to create stories and find her inner voice through the lines across the pages.

Woodson brings to life her memoir of growing up during a time when not all people were treated right because of the color of their skin. As she writes, she provides glimpses of what life was like in the aftermath Jim Crow and gaining an understanding of the Civil Rights Movement and what it was like growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness. Readers cannot help but become apart of Jacqueline’s words, become emotionally involved within the text, feel her loss when she leave South Carolina to go to Brooklyn, and gain a sense of life as a child of color then.

Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Veronica Chambers

…I suspect this book will be to a generation of girls what [Nikki] Giovanni's [Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day] was to mine: a history lesson, a mash note passed in class, a book to read burrowed underneath the bed covers and a life raft during long car rides when you want to float far from wherever you are, and wherever you're going, toward the person you feel destined to be…Woodson's writing can seem so spare, so effortless, that it is easy to overlook the wonder and magic of her words. The triumph of Brown Girl Dreaming is not just in how well Woodson tells us the story of her life, but in how elegantly she writes words that make us want to hold those carefully crafted poems close, apply them to our lives, reach into the mirror she holds up and make the words and the worlds she explores our own. This is a book full of poems that cry out to be learned by heart. These are poems that will, for years to come, be stored in our bloodstream.

Publishers Weekly 05/26/2014

Written in verse, Woodson’s collection of childhood memories provides insight into the Newbery Honor author’s perspective of America, “a country caught/ between Black and White,” during the turbulent 1960s. Jacqueline was born in Ohio, but spent much of her early years with her grandparents in South Carolina, where she learned about segregation and was made to follow the strict rules of Jehovah’s Witnesses, her grandmother’s religion. Wrapped in the cocoon of family love and appreciative of the beauty around her, Jacqueline experiences joy and the security of home. Her move to Brooklyn leads to additional freedoms, but also a sense of loss: “Who could love/ this place—where/ no pine trees grow, no porch swings move/ with the weight of/ your grandmother on them.” The writer’s passion for stories and storytelling permeates the memoir, explicitly addressed in her early attempts to write books and implicitly conveyed through her sharp images and poignant observations seen through the eyes of a child. Woodson’s ability to listen and glean meaning from what she hears lead to an astute understanding of her surroundings, friends, and family. Ages 10–up. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency. (Aug.)

STARRED REVIEW Booklist

“[Woodson’s] memoir in verse is a marvel, as it turns deeply felt remembrances of Woodson’s preadolescent life into art. . . . Her mother cautions her not to write about her family but, happily, many years later, she has and the result is both elegant and eloquent, a haunting book about memory that is itself altogether memorable.

The Horn Book, STARRED REVIEW

“A memoir-in-verse so immediate that readers will feel they are experiencing the author’s childhood right along with her. . . . Most notably of all, perhaps, we trace her development as a nascent writer, from her early, overarching love of stories through her struggles to learn to read through the thrill of her first blank composition book to her realization that ‘words are [her] brilliance.’ The poetry here sings: specific, lyrical, and full of imagery. An extraordinary—indeed brilliant—portrait of a writer as a young girl.”

This poetic memoir is ideal for middle school children to read and grasp a first person point of view of life of African Americans during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Although this is a story, students can easily identify figurative language in its poetic form. The readers can also sense the emotions enclosed within the pages through the diction Woodson uses to describe her surroundings. This would be a great book to cross curriculum and pair with a history lesson or unit over Civil Rights.