Brown Girl Dreaming
Ratings56
Average rating4.3
I was surprised to pick up this book and found that it was written in verse. I've seen this book around for a while and haven't read any reviews yet but my goodness was this book very good! In verse books always felt clunky to me (I've read a couple of middle grade ones when I was younger and there was a few popular In verse books back in the day that I never much liked.) This one on the other hand felt like a memory. I can not even explain the feeling fully, this was true poetry. Growing up with Jacqueline was an experience that I highly recommend this book. ~Ashley
Oh wow, this was beautiful. I was right there in all of those memories with her.
A short, sweet and beautiful autobiography.
Read with my 10 year old son. Saw Ms. Woodson speak at KPLA. Lovely book, my son enjoyed.
Jacqueline Woodson shares her growing up years, years that are filled with the small and large agonies and ecstasies of childhood, all told in beautiful poetry.
Over and over, Woodson shares how much she longs to grow up and be a writer.
Oh, Jacqueline, how happy I am that you did.
an autobiography in poems. I'm not a big poetry reader, but I quite liked this.
Short thoughts: This is really an incredible book. A memoir entirely in verse. I listened to this, but also used Amazon's preview feature to read some of the verse. I am going to buy this in print and read it again because while the narration was excellent and I think the best way for me to hear it first, I need to see the verse and read it slowly to get the brilliance of the structure.
I read this back to back with Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings because they both came up on holds from my library back to back, but they paired nicely. Two memoirs of childhood by two Black women a generation apart. They had far different experiences, but still many overlapping realities. Divorced parents, living with grandparents for a while, rural and urban life as children.
And apart from the verse, they were similarly story focused, although Brown Girl Dreaming was more chronological. Both well worth reading.
My slightly longer thoughts are on my blog at http://bookwi.se/brown-girl-dreaming/
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
-Langston Hughes
I do not know if these hands will become
Malcolm's—raised and fisted
or Martin's—open and asking
or James's—curled around a pen.
I do not know if these hands will be
Rosa's
or Ruby's
gently gloved
and fiercely folded
calmly in a lap,
on a desk,
around a book,
ready
to change the world . .
You'll face this in your life someday,
my mother will tell us
over and over again.
A moment when you walk into a room and
no one there is like you.
It'll be scary sometimes.
Somewhere in my brain
each laugh, tear and lullaby
becomes memory
We're as good as anybody,
my mother whispers.
As good as anybody
Everyone else, she says,
has a new place to be now.
Everyone else
has gone away.
And now coming back home
isn't really coming back home
at all
Lullaby
At night, every living thing competes
for a chance to be heard.
The crickets
and frogs call out.
Sometimes, there's the soft
who-whoo of an owl lost
amid the pines.
Even the dogs won't rest until
they've howled
at the moon.
But the crickets always win, long after
the frogs stop croaking
and the owl has found its way home.
Long after the dogs have lain down
losing the battle against sleep,
the crickets keep going
as though they know their song
is our lullaby.
Will the words end, I ask
whenever I remember to.
Nope, my sister says, all of five years old now,
and promising me
infinity.
In my own head,
it's real as anything.
I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began—
I loved my friend.
—Langston Hughes
But on paper, things can live forever.
On paper, a butterfly
never dies.
Even the silence
has a story to tell you.
Just listen. Listen.
And on those days, so much light and warmth fills
the room that it's hard not to believe
in a little bit
of everything.
Do you remember . . . ?
someone's always asking and
someone else, always does.
No accidents, my mother says. Just fate and faith
and reasons.
When there are many worlds
you can choose the one
you walk into each day.
When there are many worlds, love can wrap itself
around you, say, Don't cry. Say, You are as good as anyone.
Say, Keep remembering me. And you know, even as the
world explodes
around you—that you are loved . . .
Each day a new world
opens itself up to you. And all the worlds you are—
Ohio and Greenville
Woodson and Irby
Gunnar's child and Jack's daughter
Jehovah's Witness and nonbeliever
listener and writer
Jackie and Jacqueline—
gather into one world
called You
where You decide
what each world
and each story
and each ending
will finally be.
Lovely, threaded with sadness, but also love. Each poem/chapter has a topic, and the progression does not always feel linear, but the cumulative effect is to tell the story of Jackie's family and her growing awareness of herself as a writer. I read straight through without flipping to the end, so it was a delight to find pictures of the family on the last pages.
I really enjoyed listening to this beautiful book read by the author on audio book.
My review can't do this book justice. One that will stick with me for a long time. Can't wait to share this book with my girls.