Brown Girl Dreaming

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Published August 28th 2014 by Nancy Paulsen Books

5 Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I know I read a blog that highlighted Brown Girl Dreaming and if you are reading this, please leave me a comment so I can connect back to your post.

Brown Girl Dreaming, is a memoir in free verse. It was a 2014 National Book Award winner. Woodson was also named “Young People’s Poet Laureate” by the Poetry Foundation. This book tells of her parents, especially her mother, her family and the experiences she had in life. Being an African American in the 1960s and 1970s was very tumultuous and difficult. It was a time of protest trying to get basic rights, but it was an honest telling of how this fit into her life. I really don’t know how to review this book. I have not read a book in free verse before, but I enjoyed this one. I think this is an important book for people to read. They can see that things may have come a long way in some respects but not all. An own voices book that I definitely recommend.

Brown Girl Dreaming

About the Book: Jacqueline Woodson, one of today’s finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse.

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.

Check out Carol’s review at Reading Ladies. It is so much more eloquent than mine.

Jacqueline Woodson

About the Author: I used to say I’d be a teacher or a lawyer or a hairdresser when I grew up but even as I said these things, I knew what made me happiest was writing.

I wrote on everything and everywhere. I remember my uncle catching me writing my name in graffiti on the side of a building. (It was not pretty for me when my mother found out.) I wrote on paper bags and my shoes and denim binders. I chalked stories across sidewalks and penciled tiny tales in notebook margins. I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.

I also told a lot of stories as a child. Not “Once upon a time” stories but basically, outright lies. I loved lying and getting away with it! There was something about telling the lie-story and seeing your friends’ eyes grow wide with wonder. Of course I got in trouble for lying but I didn’t stop until fifth grade.

That year, I wrote a story and my teacher said “This is really good.” Before that I had written a poem about Martin Luther King that was, I guess, so good no one believed I wrote it. After lots of brouhaha, it was believed finally that I had indeed penned the poem which went on to win me a Scrabble game and local acclaim. So by the time the story rolled around and the words “This is really good” came out of the otherwise down-turned lips of my fifth grade teacher, I was well on my way to understanding that a lie on the page was a whole different animal — one that won you prizes and got surly teachers to smile. A lie on the page meant lots of independent time to create your stories and the freedom to sit hunched over the pages of your notebook without people thinking you were strange.

Lots and lots of books later, I am still surprised when I walk into a bookstore and see my name on a book’s binder. Sometimes, when I’m sitting at my desk for long hours and nothing’s coming to me, I remember my fifth grade teacher, the way her eyes lit up when she said “This is really good.” The way, I — the skinny girl in the back of the classroom who was always getting into trouble for talking or missed homework assignments — sat up a little straighter, folded my hands on the desks, smiled and began to believe in me.

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