Brown Girl Dreaming
In Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson, tells the moving story of her childhood. Using mesmerising verse, she navigates the reader through life in South Carolina and New York.
Raised in two cities, 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. How she coped with living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.
A touching and powerful account of her life. Each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged. With every line, you get more of 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. The love that she developed for stories inspired her and stayed with her throughout her years. It was from this love that the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.
The entire book flows in dreamy poetry as Woodson describes growing up during the 1960s in America. Is it a memoir, a novel, a book of poetry? No matter how it is categorised, it is what Woodson says about it in her author’s note. “And that’s what this book is – my past, my people, my memories, my story.”
Brown Girl Dreaming won the New York Times 2014 National Book Award. It also won the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor Award, the NAACP Image Award and the Sibert Honor Award.
