A memoir that recently captivated my heart was one written for the middle grade age. Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson, is a nonfiction memoir written in poetry, which I think is the best of both worlds. Woodson takes her readers through her birth and her growing-up years during the civil rights movement. She shares about her family background, all the setbacks she experienced as a little girl and when writing began to call to her.
I’m always fascinated by the lives of other people, especially when they’re writers, so I found myself completely lost in this story. I’d usually read it during our family’s Silent Reading Time, just before bed, and, every single night, I was surprised by the timer that says Silent Reading is over, which I call the mark of a great book.
Brown Girl Dreaming was a lovely read, and when I was trying to figure out why it was so lovely, I could only point to the language of it. Because the book is written in poetry, it is written in a beautiful language. Woodson took care with her words, and she fashioned them into just the right sort of combination so that they would not move through a mind but would rest in a heart.
Take her explanation of where she was born:
“I am born in Ohio but
the stories of South Carolina already run
like rivers
through my veins.”
The passage has great imagery, indicating that we are born into a family, but our history flows with many different places.
Woodson visited family themes frequently in Brown Girl Dreaming. Here she is speaking about some pictures she sorted through when she was just a girl.
“Look closely. There I am
in the furrow of Jack’s brow,
in the slyness of Alicia’s smile,
in the bend of Grace’s hand…“There I am…
beginning.”
This resonated so deeply with me, because I enjoy looking at photos and trying to see the pieces in my family that I find in myself or in my boys. The passage speaks of heritage and existence.
Woodson was born in an important time, when black people were fighting for their rights. In one passage she says:
“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
gentle gloved
and fiercely folded
calmly in a lap,
on a desk,
around a book,
ready
to change the world…”
I find this a passage full of wonder and hope. She does not know what kind of life it will be for her. The image of the hands is a beautiful one—whose will she carry? It is the wondering of any child—will they be able to make a difference like all those who have come before?
Woodson showed off her grasp of beautiful language in several passages (too many to cite them all!):
Here, she is speaking of the death of an uncle:
“But the few words in my mother’s mouth
become the missing
after Odell dies—a different silence
than either of them has ever known.”
Here, she is documenting the difference between her grandmother and grandfather:
“And when we are called by our names
my grandmother
makes them all one
HopeDellJackie
but my grandfather
takes his sweet time, saying each
as if he has all day long
or a whole lifetime.”Here, she is speaking of her mother and father trying to decide on her name:
“Name a girl Jack, my father said
and she can’t help but
grow up strong.
Raise her right, my father said,
and she’ll make that name her own.
Name a girl Jack
and people will look at her twice, my father said.
They compromised, of course, and named her Jacqueline.
And this passage, on what she finds when visiting her grandmother and grandfather:
“In downtown Greenville,
they painted over the WHITE ONLY signs,
except on the bathroom doors,
they didn’t use a lot of paint
so you can still see the words, right there
like a ghost standing in front
still keeping you out.”
When Woodson wrote about her father, who was not in her life for much of it, her words resonated deep within:
“So many years have passed since we last saw
our father, his absence
like a bubble in my older brother’s life,
that pops again and again
into a whole lot of tiny bubbles
of memory.”
Yes. I have known that bubble. The bubble never disappears, just forms into smaller bubbles that pop and make even more. So you’re still filled with the missing of him, but maybe it’s gotten a little easier. Or maybe just harder to ignore.
In another passage, Woodson shared what she used to do to bargain with the powers that be when she was a child:
“Each evening we wait for the first light
of the last fireflies, catch them in jars
then let them go again. As though we understand
their need for freedom.
as though our silent prayers to stay in Greenville
will be answered if
we do what we know is right.”
When you’re a child, you feel like everything you do is sort of a bargain. Do what you’re told, so you can get this one wish. Do the right thing, so your dad will come home. It was beautifully sad.
In this passage, Woodson’s grandmother has just admonished her grandchildren for not liking the neighbor girls because they get to play on a swings longer than Woodson and her siblings do. Her grandmother tells them their “hearts are bigger than that.”
“But our hearts aren’t bigger than that.
Our hearts are tiny and mad.
If our hearts were hands, they’d hit.
If our hearts were feet, they’d surely kick somebody!”
I laughed a little at this, because it’s such an accurate representation for what a kid feels in a fit of jealousy.
Again, her language in description showed a great mastery of metaphor and mechanics:
“Deep winter and the night air is cold. So still,
it feels like the world goes on forever in the darkness
until you look up and the earth stops
in a ceiling of stars.”“You don’t need words
on a night like this. Just the warmth
of your grandfather’s arm. Just the silent promise
that the world as we know it
will always be here.”“The page looks like the day—wrinkled and empty
no longer promising anyone
anything.”“Darkness like a cape that we wear for hours, curled into it
and back to sleep.”
Woodson also shared about her struggles with reading and writing. She found it easier to tell stories than write them down. She also preferred reading books everyone considered beneath her level to the ones with a whole lot of pages and not many pictures. But a book with pictures was the first time she saw a black child depicted in the pages—and that made her believe that she could do what she felt was in her heart to do—write.
She tells of it in this passage:
“If someone had taken
that book out of my hand
said, You’re too old for this
maybe
I’d never have believed
that someone who looked like me
could be in the pages of the book
that someone who looked like me
had a story.”
Her description of what happens with a story when she begins telling it was fantastic:
“It’s easier to make up stories
than it is to write them down. When I speak,
the words come pouring out of me. The story
wakes up and walks all over the room. Sits in a chair,
crosses one leg over the other, says,
Let me introduce myself. Then just starts going on and on.”
At one point, she speaks about being the younger sister of a brilliant girl. The teachers, she said, waited for her to be brilliant, too.
“Wait for me to stand
before class, easily reading words even high school
students stumble over. And they keep waiting.
and waiting
and waiting
and waiting
Until one day, they walk into the classroom,
almost call me Odel—then stop
remember that I am the other Woodson
and begin searching for brilliance
at another desk.”
At times, Woodson’s poetry showed the true nature of a child, as in this passage about how she asked her mother if she could wear her hair in an Afro, and her mother said no:
“Even though she says no to me,
my mom spends a lot of Saturday morning
in her bedroom mirror,
picking her own hair
into a huge black and beautiful dome.
which
is so completely one hundred percent unfair
but she says, This is the difference between
being a grown-up and being a child. When
she’s not looking, I stick my tongue out
at her.”
The last poem of the book sums up Woodson’s theme: that even if we feel like we’re a mistake, even if we don’t think we have much of value to offer the world, we were planned for a purpose, and we are made to make the world a different place:
“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 Kirby
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 endingwill finally be.”
What a fantastic way to end a book for kids who are wondering if they really do have worth in this adult world.
I believe this is an important piece of literature in the children’s book world, because Woodson was a woman who grew up during an important time in history that children today will only read about in their history books. But she writes about that time with such honesty and emotion that her readers will not be able to pass over it as “just something that happened in history,” but will remember it was something that happened to actual people. When considering history, it’s easy to feel that distance from the tragedies that took place. But Woodson brings those tragedies front and center, in a gentle way. We need more literature like this in the middle grade genre, and I’m so thankful that Woodson so bravely told her story.
