Book cover image:
Taken from Penguin Random House (Penguin Random House, 2016)
Genre:
This book Brown girl dreaming was the 2015 winner
of the Coretta Scott King Award for the author, Jacqueline Woodson, the 2014 National Book Award Winner, and the 2015 Newbery Honor recipient. This book fits in many different genres including
novels in verse, poetry, biography, and autobiography/ memoir. I would even venture to say it could be
placed in a category for books about social change and
African-American history in America.
Book Summary:
This novel is written in
free verse and tells the story of the author, Jacqueline Woodson, as she grows
up in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. Jacqueline was a young black girl who lived in both the North and the
South and experienced discrimination in ways that many readers have only read
about. The civil rights movement was
still very strong, especially in the South were segregation had only recently
ended and Jim Crow laws were still lingering.
Jacqueline's mother was very involved in activism and fighting for equal rights,
so she left her children with grandparents in South Carolina to move to New
York. While with her grandparents, she
was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness which presented an entirely different type of
struggle. Throughout the stories,
written entirely in verse, the reader gets to go through the emotional journey
with Jacqueline as she comes of age and finds herself through her writing.
APA Reference of Book:
Woodson, J. (2014). Brown
girl dreaming. New York: Nancy Paulsen Books.
Impressions:
This book has been
sitting on my “to-be-read” shelf for years and I my only regret is that I did
not read it sooner. I am not one that
generally enjoys poetry and books written in verse which is why I kept putting
it off, but Jacqueline Woodson writes so well that I almost forgot I was not
reading an actual traditional novel. The
author tells the story of her life in a way that doesn’t require all the extra
“fluff” that is normally found in novels.
Each word written means something and captures the reality of a young
girl growing up in a part of the country that did not accept blacks as equal
members of society. I took a college
level literature course on African American literature and this title should
have been included in the reading list.
Woodson tells a story of growing up during the civil rights era from the
point of view of a young girl trying to figure out who she is, which is unique
and powerful. I know this novel is
written for middle and high school readers, but the author writes with such
emotion and complexity that it could easily be enjoyed and studied at an adult
level simply due to the high literary quality of the book.
I must share some of my
favorite quotes from the book, simply because I want to entice everyone to read
this book! I have tabbed over 25 pages of this book, and probably would have marked
even more but I was running low on tabs.
“In Montgomery, only seven years have passed
since Rosa Parks refused
to give up
her seat on a city bus
I
am born brown-skinned, black-haired
and
wide-eyed.
I
am born Negro here and Colored there” (Woodson, 2014, p. 3) .
“First they brought
us here.
Then
we worked for free. Then it was 1863,
and
we were supposed to be free but we weren’t.
And
that’s why people are so mad” (Woodson,
2014, p. 72) .
“But I want the world where my daddy is
and don’t know why
anybody’s God would make me
have to choose” (Woodson, 2014, p. 123) .
“Even the silence
has a story to tell you.
Just listen. Listen” (Woodson, 2014, p. 278) .
These four verses are just a
small sampling of the story of Jacqueline Woodson. These give a glimpse into the racial
struggles, the history of the time, the religious struggle faced by a young
girl, and the personal discovery that Woodson makes when she realizes that she
also has a story to tell.
Professional Review: Taken
from “The Horn Book”
Originally published in
the September/October 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
Here is a memoir-in-verse so immediate that
readers will feel they are experiencing the author's childhood right along with
her. It starts out somewhat slowly, with Woodson relying on others' memories to
relate her (1963) birth and infancy in Ohio, but that just serves to underscore
the vividness of the material once she begins to share her own memories; once
her family arrives in Greenville, South Carolina, where they live with her
maternal grandparents. Woodson describes a South where the whites-only signs
may have been removed but where her grandmother still can't get waited on in
Woolworth's, where young people are sitting at lunch counters and standing up
for civil rights; and Woodson expertly weaves that history into her own.
However, we see young Jackie grow up not just in historical context but
also--and equally--in the context of extended family, community (Greenville
and, later, Brooklyn), and religion (she was raised Jehovah's Witness). 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: "So the first time my mother goes to New York City /
we don't know to be sad, the weight / of our grandparents' love like a blanket
/ with us beneath it, / safe and warm." An extraordinary--indeed
brilliant--portrait of a writer as a young girl.
APA Reference of Professional Review:
Parravano,
M. V. (2014, Nov 20). Review of Brown girl dreaming. Retrieved Feb 20,
2018, from The Horn Book: https://www.hbook.com/2014/11/choosing-books/recommended-books/review-brown-girl-dreaming/
Library Uses:
There are so many
potential ways this book could be used for various age groups from middle
school up to college and for various subjects from history to language arts. I am going to branch off a little and focus
on home-school groups, as we have a growing home-school population in my
library. The book Brown girl dreaming is a great introduction to creative writing for
teens ranging from 14-18. After reading
the book together as a co-op home-school class or individually if based
completely in the home environment, students could be challenged to retell a
personal experience or memory completely in free verse, just as Woodson
did. Additionally, the topic of the book
would create a great deal of discussion between children and parents about the
history of America during the civil rights movement. This book and the wonderful writing of
Jacqueline Woodson would foster a deeper level of thinking simply due to the
story being written in verse and covering complex subject matters. It would also allow students to explore their
own personal story and give them an opportunity to express themselves in a new
way.
Readalikes:
There are many fantastic
books written in verse that explore diversity and history of various culture
groups. The following three books are
recommended for middle school to high school readers and would compliment the
above lesson and allow for the exploration of other cultures and
histories.
The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan FranciscoManzano by Margarita Engle, Sean Qualls
(Illustrator) is the winner of the 2008 Pura Belpre Award for Narrative. The
story tells of how the young boy, Juan Fransisco Manzano was born into the home
of a wealthy slave owner in Cuba in 1797.
Audacity by Melanie
Crowder was a 2015 finalist for the National Jewish Book award and is a powerful
novel primarily for readers 7th grade and up. The book is inspired by and loosely based on
the life of Clara Lemich who came to America for a better life and fought
courageously for women’s rights in the early 1900s.
Inside out and back again by Thanhha Lai has received numerous book awards including the
2011 National Book Award and the 2012 Newbery Honor award. The story told in verse Hà whose family is forced to
leave Saigon when the Vietnam War gets too close too home. The family comes to America in lives in
Alabama where young Hà and her family experience pain,
discrimination, and even joy in the foreign lands of their new home.
Checkout my Goodreads list
of children and youth literature I read during the Spring 2018 Semester at UNT.
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