I don’t actually read poetry that comfortably. I mean this specifically that I don’t read books of poetry that comfortably. I tend to want to finish books and that leads me to moving through poetry too quickly. And so I often avoid collections, and since I teach high school English, I figure I get a decent amount of poetry in my life as a matter of course. Luckily for me, I listened to the audiobook version of this book read by the author and so […]
The Power of Words
Jacqueline Woodson’s 2014 poetic memoir Brown Girl Dreaming won a slew of awards: a National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, an NAACP Image Award, just to name a few. It is the beautifully told story of Woodson’s childhood, of the people and environments that formed both her and her dream of becoming a writer. It also offers glimpses into the civil rights movement and the experience of racism through the eyes of a child who witnessed […]
Another *shrug* of a story
So I discovered Jacqueline Woodson thanks to this lovely little corner of the internet, and Bonnie specifically. That’s right, I still remember who first told me to go read Brown Girl Dreaming. Because anytime people want an amazing story these days it’s one of my first recommendations. It’s billed as young adult and is poetry to boot, but damn if it isn’t one of the best that I’ve read in the past few years. So when I saw Ms. Woodson had a new book out, […]
A Meh Grows in Brooklyn
When I was growing up, my mother always told me that, if I couldn’t think of something nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all. Good thing I thought of something nice to say about this book, or this review would’ve been a lot harder to write. August is a Tennessee girl who gets taken to Brooklyn after bad stuff goes down back home. After a lot of time spent staring out the window, she eventually makes friends with a trio of talented, intelligent, […]
A Melody to Our Madness
If we had jazz, would we have survived differently? If we had known our story was a blues story with a refrain running through it, would we have lifted our heads, said to each other, This is memory again and again until the living made sense? Where would we be now if we had known there was a melody to our madness (1-2)? If a novel and a poem had a child, it would be this book—brief, beautiful, and biting–both sad and celebratory. I read […]
A poem to black girlhood, in Roxane Gay’s Goodreads words.
I really, really liked Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir Brown Girl Dreaming. When I heard that she’d come out with another book, I got excited. Would this be a sequel to Brown Girl Dreaming? Alas, no. Another Brooklyn, while lyrical and poetic in nature, is a fictional novel that takes place in Brooklyn. Woodson is a skillful writer, but I just didn’t connect with this book in the same way. I go into further details in my full review, but I must confess that perhaps my not […]